


Muggle Studies

by semaphore27



Series: Götterdämmerung 24/7 [11]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Iron Man (Movies), Norse Religion & Lore, Sherlock (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Americans, BAMF Loki, Boarding School, Brotherhood, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Bruce Banner Is a Good Bro, Care of Magical Creatures, Castles, Class Differences, F/F, F/M, Family Fluff, Flying Lessons, Friendship, Gen, Ghosts, God(dess) of Mischief, Good Loki, Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, Honeydukes, Intersex Loki, Language, Languages and Linguistics, Loki's Kids, Loving Marriage, M/M, Magic, Magic Classes, Magic-Users, Magical Accidents, Magical Artifacts, Making Friends, Mischief Managed, Moving, Muggle Life, Muggle Technology, Muggle/Wizard Relations, Parent Tony Stark, Pregnant Loki, Pregnant Sex, Protective Tony Stark, SameSex Marriage, School Uniforms, Skipping Class, Talking To Dead People, Talking portraits, Teacher Bruce, Teacher Loki, Teacher Tony Stark, Teaching, The Marauder's Map, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, Wizarding Traditions, Wizarding World
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-06-13 20:57:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 51,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15373164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semaphore27/pseuds/semaphore27
Summary: As Hagrid would say--Happee Birthday Harry!My sister and I were talking, as one does, and we got on the topic of Hogwarts, and Loki, and the apparent ages of Loki's kids in theGotterdammerung 24/7Universe making them the same age as James Sirius Potter in the Potterverse, and different systems of magic, and what if, as a kid from a Wizarding family, one ended up with Tony Stark as a Muggle Studies teacher. Which led to the images of Loki teaching Defense against the Dark Arts, and of Hela out-Hermoineing even Hermoine--only doing it for Slytherin. And not almost every single frickin' cool kid getting sorted into Gryffindor, not everySlytherin being evil, and Hufflepuffs being great, because they're kind, dependable and loyal. Pottermore sorts me as a Huffleclaw. Or possibly a Ravenpuff, so I may be prejudiced.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A disclaimer first, because while I am a great lover of the Potterverse, I can't claim to be a dedicated Potter Scholar. My Potterfacts tend to rattle around a bit in my mind-cottage (unlike Sherlock, I don't require a palace) with a truly frightening amount of other stuff, as my regular readers are only too aware. Mistakes will undoubtedly be made, so please feel free either to give a gentle correction, or else tell yourself, "Oh, this must a slightly divergent  
> alternative universe." Or both. The series will concentrate on the Stark Family (and friends) as the interact with the Potterverse.
> 
> Although this is a tale in the 24/7 continuum, and it jumps us about four years into the future in that timeline, I don't intend to spoil any current ongoing stories except for the following two facts: 1) Tony finally got Loki his puppy, a black male pug which he named Mopsi (fans of Loki's epicly bad ability to name anything should note that, since half the world calls pugs "Mops" or "Mopsis," Loki has basically named his pug "Pug," in the same way George of the Jungle named his ape friend "Ape;" 2) Loki and Bruce, over the course of _Brave New Worlds_ have become close friends.
> 
> For those just jumping into the time-stream, the following facts should help: 1) Loki and Tony have been happily married for over five years; 2) they share five living children (ages given are apparent ages, not necessarily biological): Sleipnir (Sleip - 19), triplets Hela, Jörmungandr (Jöri), and Fenrir (Fen) -11) and toddler Edwin (3), who was born with the thought/personality pattern and intelligence of Tony's former A.I., J.A.R.V.I.S., though not with his knowledge or memories; 3) all five are Loki's biological children, borne by him as a function of his Jörtunn physiology. Tony has adopted the older kids and regards them, 100%, as his own, Ed is Tony and Loki's biological child of both of them; 4) Loki had two older sons, Narfi and Vali, who were murdered by Odin, and lost a baby, Wilhelm, a few months before Ed was conceived; 5) Tony has been doing what he does--  
> inventing, making wads of cash, bugging Pepper, and Avenging, Civil War never happened; 6) Loki and the kids are, on paper, British citizens (hence Hogwarts), Loki holds doctorate degrees in linguistics and archaeology, writes a highly successful young adult series called "Sons of Asgard," paints, sculpts, and has written and illustrated a series of unrelated picture books, the proceeds going to good causes, and has been an active Avenger for about three years. Anything else will be explained as the story progresses, though I plan for this installment to be somewhat more self-contained than the other installments in the series.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hot town, summer in the city..."
> 
> Tony Stark is at home, having a perfectly ordinary day, when his daughter informs him that her brothers are counting owls. Shortly after, fancy envelopes start shooting down the chimney... What's a poor (okay, insanely rich), Muggle engineer to do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The summary quote is from The Lovin' Spoonful's 1966 hit, " _Summer in the City_ "
> 
> Tony may well be thinking of Fozzie Bear's line from _The Muppet Movie_ : "A bear in his natural habitat... a Studebaker!"
> 
> "Blessed Death"=Hela Stark (whose namesake "Queen Hela") rules the Land of the Dead), and her many black-garbed "sisters" are charged both with bringing death and conveying the dead to the afterlife. Hela brings death to those to whom it comes as a blessing.
> 
> Gazpacho=a cold soup of Spanish origin, usually tomato-based and made of chopped or pureed raw veggies and spices. Yum!
> 
> Thea Ransome, now a widow, has been the Stark Family cook and house-manager since early in Loki and Tony's marriage.
> 
> What three-year-old wouldn't think Sam Wilson's (aka The Falcon's) suit with wings is way cooler than his dad's suit.
> 
> The Childlike Empress is the ruler of Fantasia in _The Neverending Story_.
> 
> The _Theatrum Chemicum_ , or " _Chemical Theater_ " (full title: _Theatrum Chemicum, præcipuos selectorum auctorum tractatus de Chemiæ et Lapidis Philosophici Antiquitate, veritate, jure præstantia, et operationibus continens in gratiam veræ Chemiæ et Medicinæ Chemicæ Studiosorum (ut qui uberrimam unde optimorum remediorum messem facere poterunt) congestum et in quatuor partes seu volumina digestum_ is a six-volume anthology of writings on alchemy, considered the most comprehensive such collection in history. It was published over six decades, beginning in 1602. Light beach reading, indeed!
> 
> The maximum dimensions for carry-on luggage are: 9" x 14" x 22" (22 cm x 35 cm x 56 cm), handles and wheels included. Really light beach reading!
> 
>  _No es nada_ =Spanish for "it's nothing"
> 
> Fenrir Stark was injured in infancy by a bio-magical machine constructed by Victor von Doom, which left him with a condition similar in some ways to a high-functioning form of autism.
> 
> Milady de Winter is the main henchwoman of villain Cardinal Richelieu in _The Three Musketeers._ The Comte de Rochefort (eye-patch and all) is the Cardinal's leading henchman.

* * *

_Behold, the domesticated Stark in his natural habitat_ , Tony thought, as he stirred the last dollops of guacamole and sour cream into a decorative spiral on the top of the final bowl of Mrs Ransome's always-excellent Spicy Summer Gazpacho.

The mercury had pushed up to ridiculous heights over the past few days, leaving Manhattan sweltering, the temperatures ludicrous for July in any city not actually located in a desert, hot enough to force even his daughter Hela into exchanging her usual fifteen layers of black velvet for fifteen layers of crisp white linen instead.

Hot enough to make Tony wonder about investing in vacation property in Jötunnheimr.

Despite that, he'd just watched Fen and Edwin dash by the kitchen windows for the seventh time in the past fifteen minutes. Little Ed even had some arm-waving action going on that made him looked like he seriously meant to achieve flight through speed and flapping alone.

"Fuck," he said, Hela being the only one of the kids near enough to hear him cuss--and elegantly as she tended to present herself, his Blessed Death could still have quite the potty mouth on her, with a vocabulary of swears to rival Tony's own. He gestured at the window. "Is this about Sam's wings being so much cooler than my suit? If so, that's it. No more visits to my tower for Wilson."

"They're counting owls," Hela answered, turning a page in her book with one gloved finger, and looking just like her _Pabbi_ as she did so. Of course, it being summer, Hela consented to consume books and only books, her top-of-the-line StarkPad stashed in some out-of-the-way drawer until school started up again in the fall--at which point she'd make it look like she was doing Tony a personal favor by deigning to use the device. Honestly, the things he put up with!

Tony laughed at himself. He'd gladly put up with that and more. A million times more, actually, if it meant being surrounded by his strange and beautiful family.

"Whatcha reading, Empress?" he asked. Hela's book looked like the Bible from a medieval church. He'd owned smaller suitcases.

" _The Theatrum Chemicum, Volume 2_ ," his daughter answered.

"Okay. A little light summer reading for the beach, then?" Seriously, Hela's "light reading" would have well-exceeded the maximum dimensions for a piece of carry-on luggage on all major airlines. "Want to set the table?"

Hela green-flashied in a nonchalant kind of way and cutlery, followed by cups and plates, flew past Tony piece by piece. The napkins folded themselves into swans with crowns, which flew gracefully in a line to alight, one-by-one, onto each place setting.

"Wow, nice touch," Tony said, only partly snide--the remaining part honestly impressed. "Been working on that, Empress?"

" _No es nada_ ," Hela told him modestly.

"Will you call the boys? Soup's on, and besides, they'll get sunstroke running around like that in this crazy heat."

Halfway into carrying his tray of bowls in from the kitchen, Tony ground to a halt. "Wait... owls?"

"Owls," Hela answered, in firm tones, obviously making a conscious choice not to clarify.

Tony thought of asking her if the "owls were not what they seemed," as the Log Lady once famously declared in the _Twin Peaks_ TV series of his youth, but decided the reference was either way, way before his daughter's time, or something he was better off not knowing she'd been watching, and went to locate Loki instead.

He found his husband all by himself, lying on the bed in their dark (and frostily air-conditioned) bedroom, snuffling, his eyes leaking. He didn't even seem to notice that Tony had entered.

"Babe, what's up?" He lay down behind his husband on their bed, making him into the world's tallest little spoon. "What is it?"

Hela flashed a question mark into his head.

 _Would you and Sleip get the boys washed up? Stall if at all possible?_ Inspiration struck. _Tell Fen and Ed they have to shower after running around half the morning like Wild Things._

 _Sleip can take charge of Fenrir_ , Hela answered, in a mental tone Loki might have called "shirty"—proving that even a precocious genius enchantress like his daughter wasn't above shoving the harder of two jobs off onto an unsuspecting sibling. It wasn't that Fen was naughty, or uncooperative, he just tended to be... um... lively was probably the best description. Contrast that to Edwin, a little three-year-old bundle of cuddles and smiles.

Tony recalled, with a slight pang of guilt, how many times he let his husband deal with Fen, while he took care of the baby.

Loki blew his nose massively on a handful of tissues. "Beloved, I am sorry. I am sorry."

"No need to be sorry, babe." Tony brushed back curls to kiss behind Loki's ear. "You can be sad if you need to be."

The gods, or Norns, or somebody, knew Loki had gone through enough, over his many years, to give him flashbacks of emotion every now and then.

"You know that I just don't want you to be feeling sad if you don't need to be. If I can make you feel better, that is."

"Luncheon, and the children..." Loki began, slightly frog-voiced.

"Gazpacho, which will totally keep. The shrimp's still staying cold in the fridge. And the boys were playing outside like maniacs and are in dire need of scrubbing, which Sleip and our daughter can totally handle. Now, what's up with my Loki?"

"Tony..." Loki paused for another huge, honking nose-blow.

Tony totally knew better than to laugh. Because Loki. His husband so rarely did anything undignified, those rare moments tended to come across as slightly hilarious.

"This morning, after breakfast..." Loki ground to a halt.

"Hmm?" Tony encouraged mildly.

About two seconds later, the other shoe dropped. Loki (who so tended not to be a crier) weeping alone in a dark room, for no reason Tony could think of. Loki actually teleporting off, more than slightly green, right in the middle of clearing the breakfast table, never to reappear...

Whoa. Okay. Funny, though—for a man who'd never once pictured himself having a big family, of being that guy with the six kids following after him like ducklings, Tony found himself totally okay with being that guy with the six kids.

Actually, he had to admit he felt better than okay. He crazy loved their kids. _Adored_ them. He just didn't envy poor Loki the next few months, considering that Loki's pregnancies tended to be beyond unfair. Punitive might be the proper word. Not to mention long, with the added joy of baby getting big first, then working on building godlike intelligence and magical abilities, _in utero_ , while poor Loki waddled around the penthouse eating pretty much anything that wasn't nailed down.

He spread his hand over Loki's still-perfectly-flat stomach, burying his face in the abundant and fragrant curls at his husband's nape, and for a little while just held him, his big little spoon, letting his acceptance and joy and worship for his one and only god just sink in through Loki's skin.

"I thought, perhaps, of Maria, for a name?" Loki said, after a time. "Perhaps Maria Frigga?"

 _Be glad it's not Maria Laufey,_ Tony told himself.

"That's beautiful, baby," Tony said. "I love you so much, and I'm so happy—though equally sorry you're in for such a tough time."

"I am strong," Loki answered. "I will readily bear whatever discomfort follows."

"You are strong," Tony agreed. "I'll let Nat and Steve know that a leave of absence is in order—unless you want to?"

"No, you may do so," Loki agreed magnanimously. "Whilst I notify Thea to prepare numerous snack boxes."

"You do that." Tony laughed, the laughter cutting off when Loki wriggled in his arms and was suddenly face-to-face, kissing him deeply and sweetly, their minds touching as their lips touched.

This time, he wasn't even put off by the eye-patch.

 

Everybody glanced up from their soup-bowls when the fireplace startled to rattle. Hot as it was, the fireplace shouldn't have been doing anything, least of all holding a fire, but among the things it most shouldn't have been doing was making noises. Of any sort.

"Do you think we have bats?" asked Jöri hopefully, happily shaking ghost pepper sauce all over the already spicy soup. The secret, maybe, of how dragons really made fire finally revealed--who knew?

Loki and Hela frowned, glancing swiftly at one another, a prime example of one of their frequent "partners in crime" exchanges.

"Milady? Rochefort? Wanna explain what the look was about?" Tony asked them, but all he got was a grin from his Childlike Empress (who'd been on a recent kick of swashbuckler movies) and a glare from his always-gorgeous but temporarily eye-patch-wearing husband. Loki never missed a literary reference, and this time he totally failed to be amused.

That Tony's husband naturally associated eye-patches with former SHIELD Director Nick Fury went without saying. That he also associated them with his least favorite Norse god of all time (now deceased) would never be mentioned by Loki--or by anyone else, Tony least of all.

The one-eyed glare Loki had shot at his beyond-contrite brother, post-battle, as he'd stalked across the tower roof, infirmary bound, still armor-clad and fuming, would have reduced a weaker being than Thor to a tiny pile of smoking ash right there atop the tower, the message, _Have you forgotten that I lack of the Asgardian healing you are so fortunate as to enjoy, brother?_ left unspoken. As it was, that look had bothered the god of thunder a lot more than the combined force of Nat and Steve's tag-team safety lecture.

Truth be told, Thor got a little hammer-happy up there now and then. He enjoyed himself too much sometimes when he fought, and he hadn't been paying the least bit of attention as he Mjolnirated scores of little Doombots out of the air. Loki had his own stuff to take care of in a firefight. He didn't need his own brother smacking football-sized chunks of metal into his face.

Loki would have been fine with the bruising, even with the detached whatever-the-thing-was-Loki-had-in-place-of-a-retina.

It was the eye-patch that was the deal-breaker. Vanity and unpleasant associations aside, the thing totally seemed to mess with Loki's sense of space. He kept running into large, stationary objects. Such as walls.

Tony knew better than to laugh, even internally. Loki would sure as hell know. He always knew.

The unseasonal (and unexpected) fireplace rattling even disturbed Mopsi, Loki's portly black pug, to the point that he actually hauled his plushy little ass off his silk cushion and high-curly-tailed it over to the hearth to investigate the noise. Tony sometimes pretended not to like the little beast, mocking his laziness and his squashed gargoyle face, but the truth was, the way Mopsi followed Loki everywhere secretly charmed him, as did the way Mops would gaze up at his master so deeply, with those big, sad, wise-looking eyes, tipping his head from one side to the other, as if every word Loki spoke required careful consideration.

Tony also secretly loved to watch Mopsi interact with his best bud, Phil's giant Harlequin Great Dane, Anastasia. The picture book Loki had done about the two of them had not only sold a million bazillion copies, there had been merchandising.

The mere concept of "merchandising" had, of course, totally appalled Loki, until Pepper explained merchandising as a way of basically having others pay you for your publicity, and weren't his profits for the book, etc., going to support no-kill shelters in the Greater New York area?

Loki, never anyone's fool, took her point--and the people of the world continued to enjoy their _Mopsi and Anastasia_  coffee mugs and calendars.

Right now, Loki had the one raised eyebrow of ultimate questioning, which looked a little funny, floating up there on its own above the eye-patch.

"Letters!" Fen yelled, and jumped down from his seat. The fact that his husband didn't even bother to "Fenrir Lokison Stark, you must ask first to be excused" him told Tony something had to be up.

A big something. A major something. Something potentially life-changing.

Fen ran back from the fireplace with his hands full of envelopes, Mopsi bouncing and barking his weirdly deep bark at the boy's heels.

"One, two, three, four, five!" he called out. "Five!"

The envelopes were big, and kind of creamy-colored, hand-addressed in fancy, swirly green calligraphy, like they'd just received invitations for an ultra-fancy wedding in the weirdest way possible.

"Sleip didn't get one." Fen looked disappointed on his brother's behalf. He was always such a sweet kid, thinking of others, the sweetest, really, of all the children. "Neither did Ed."

"Edwin is young, dearest," Loki told Fen gently, "And Sleip begins his Oxford studies in the autumn."

The expression on his face struck Tony as a strange mix of stunned/sad/excited, and Tony wondered what that possibly meant—their other recent news aside.

It hit him, suddenly, like a bolt of his brother-in-law's lightning out of the blue, that right here, in this moment, everything truly was about to change.

And then it did.


	2. Loki'd, or Not Loki'd, That is the Question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hogwarts, Loki? Seriously? Hogwarts?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _The Osbournes_ reality show, which aired from 2002 - 2005, followed the daily of Black Sabbath singer, "Prince of Darkness" Ozzy Osbourne, his manager-wife Sharon and two of their children. Poor, befuddled Ozzy seemed to wail for his wife's to rescue him about ten times per episode.
> 
> "The children were nestled..." Tony's riffing on _A Visit from St. Nicholas_ by Clement Clark Moore. Moore's children had "visions of sugar-plums" in their heads in place of arcane rituals.
> 
> A _Seiðmaður_ is a male practitioner of Old Norse shamanistic magic, related to the magic of the Norns. The _Societatem Aeterni_ (which I invented out of whole cloth) is, as discussed in _Long Ago, and in Another Country_ a society of ageless individuals sworn to protect the British Isles.
> 
> My daughter tells me that if you let your Kindle read aloud to you, the Spirit of the Kindle will read the words _hjarta hjarta minn,_ ("heart of my heart" in Icelandic, playing the part of the language of the _Aesir_ in these stories) as "Jarta Jarta Minnesota." This amuses me.
> 
> "Only drawn in such a manner"=Loki is paraphrasing Jessica Rabbit's best known line from _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_ , "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."
> 
> The Starks are a noble family from the north of Westeros, the world of _Game of Thrones_ or ( _A Song of Ice and Fire_ , if you prefer). The ongoing series is written by George R.R. Martin). The Stark family is associated with two sayings: "Winter is Coming" and "There Must Always Be a Stark in Winterfell." Frankly, considering all the hideous things that have happened to them to date, they could probably use Tony's help. The Lannisters, whose crest is a lion, are about 98% less noble than the Starks, however, they do pay their debts--though usually not in a good way.
> 
>  _Discworld_ is the land in Terry Pratchett's well-known and many-volumed series of the same name. _The Chronicles of Prydain_ , which incorporate a great deal of Welsh myth and legend, were written by Lloyd Alexander. The allegorical Narnia books are by C.S. Lewis, the Alice books by Lewis Carroll, _Peter Pan_ by J. M. Barrie, and _The Lord of the Rings_ (and related books) by J.R.R. Tolkien. I don't think I missed anyone!
> 
> Regarding Oz, Loki is referring to the Cuttenclips (the paper people), the citizens of The Dainty China Country (who are nerve-wracking to be around because they constantly keep breaking), and either the Flatheads of the Gillikin Country or the Hammer-heads of the Quadling Country. We can be fairly certain he found both peoples equally irritating.
> 
> Camelot is the legendary castle and court of King Arthur, the Once and Future King. 
> 
> Earlier in this series we discover that, before Tony, Loki's one great love was Merddyn Wyllt, or Merlin the Magician.
> 
> Pugs have amazingly soft fur on their ears and foreheads. Their tails are perfectly capably of stretching out straight, but are usually carried in a tight spiral on top of their rumps (one day I came home and found my own Wilbur the Pug running around the house with a pen tucked into his cinnamon-roll tail--I suspect I interrupted him in the midst of signing autographs). As dogs go, they are charming, affectionate, playful, cuddly, willful and narcissistic little beasts who, like Loki himself, generally do what they want (though they will tattle on others). A Labrador will communicate, "Yes, Mistress! You wish is my command!" Pugs communicate, "You want me to do what, exactly?" *snorfle snort* "Is there food involved?" Asleep, there is no more ridiculous (or charming) living creature.
> 
> Colonel Brandon (played by the late, wonderful Alan Rickman) says, "I shall run mad," in the 1995 film _Sense and Sensibility_.
> 
> The procedure to repair a torn or detached retina often involves inflating the eye. Until the pressure normalizes again (at least four to eight weeks) activities like flying or scuba diving are strictly forbidden.

* * *

"Loki!" Tony called, fully aware the moment his husband's name left his mouth that he'd sounded disturbingly close in tone to poor, befuddled old Ozzy Osbourne bleating for his wife Sharon.

That wasn't okay. So not okay. Tony was in no way okay with it.

Only, how was he supposed to sound? He'd managed to keep up something resembling a facade of parental self-control until the children were nestled all snug in their beds (undoubtedly while pictures of arcane rituals danced in their heads). However, he was a man who'd just received a letter longer than he was tall, written, apparently, in magical ink on the skins of what had to be at least a small flock of dead sheep—all of which somehow managed to fit inside a standard-sized card envelope that had come addressed to:

Anthony Edward Stark, Ph.D, Doctor Engr  
The Oddly Phallic Tower in the Heart of Manhattan  
New York, NY USA.

It probably didn't help matters that Loki's envelope read:

Professor Loki Hodrson Stark, Norse God of Fire, Mischief and Stories, Seiðrmaður, Societatem  
Aeterni, High Mage, Master of the Mystic Arts, Ph.D Ling, PhD Arch  
Ridiculous Testament to His Husband's Enormous Ego (AKA Avengers' Tower)  
New York, NY The New World

Yup, somebody had a sense of humor. Not.

Thank the gods the kids' letters just had their names (though Hela's read, "Hela Lokisdottir Stark, Blessed Death"), and their proper address.

What gave Tony pause proved to be the contents of the letters themselves, the thought that his children, instead of moving on up to middle school at Stark Academy as planned, appeared to have been invited to attend Hogwarts.

That Hogwarts. Harry Potter's Hogwarts. Fictional Hogwarts.

To say his children, even Hela, were enthused, would be an understatement. To say Tony was confused, even more so.

The whole thing with Sleipnir, Crown Prince of Asgard and their eldest, had been bad enough—not quite an argument, but not quite not, and Tony hated, hated, hated to argue, even to not-quite-argue with Loki.

For one thing, he loved his husband more than life itself and lived to make him happy. For another, Tony couldn't ever win. He'd married a guy (okay, god, clearly a god), made up almost entirely of language, charm and persuasion, while he himself was all about flying suits, exploding stuff and frankly pretty damn clever tech that he named after himself. Arguing with Loki was like bringing a wrench (Loki would say a "spanner") to a word fight, then using it to clunk himself repeatedly over the head.

Frequently, after all had been said and done, Tony lingered in a state of weary bedazzlement, without the least idea what he had (or hadn't), agreed to.

So Sleip, it turned out--their wonderful, wise, gentle Sleip--wouldn't be attending Columbia come fall. He also wouldn't be going to NYU, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Stanford, or any other well-regarded stateside school of higher education. No, by his _Pabbi's_ decree, he'd be attending Oxford University, 3,403 miles from home, reading History and Classics at Corpus Christi College, and Loki (who could, of course, teleport and be anywhere he wanted to be in seconds) regarded that as just peachy.

"I took one of my degrees at Oxford," he said blithely, "And made many mortal friends. I found it a wonderful experience."

Only Tony didn't want his heartbreakingly wonderful son to be in a whole different country—and teleporting made him projectile vomit, instantly and copiously, upon arrival.

Loki, to call his response to these thoughts exactly what it was, giggled. Which meant he'd not only heard Tony's entire mental dialogue, he'd understood it (even, it seemed, the part about Ozzy and Sharon) and been amused.

Which meant, furthermore, that Loki had at this point reached a comprehensive understanding of pop culture, and the world as they knew it no longer remained safe for humankind.

And all this while talking on the phone.

"I think I must go," he told the person on the other end of the connection. "Tony is fretting. He insists, still, that it must all be a prank, most likely _our_ prank, and is most horribly cross. However, I believe you are quite right. Yes, I will. Sweet dreams. All my best love."

"That was Kurt, wasn't it?" Tony accused. "It's a prank. It's a prank, courtesy of Kurt, Logan and you. And possibly Kitty. And Hela. I know Hela was in on it too. You guys!"

He glared at his husband, who smiled sunnily in return—what with the eye-patch, the effect appeared sinister in the extreme.

Of course Loki would be in a good mood. He had on his favorite bathrobe (or, rather, dressing gown) a silk brocade number so unapologetically swooshy and golden it actually seemed to (and maybe did) emit light, and which made him look like the gorgeously decadent emperor of some ancient Chinese dynasty. He'd orchestrated a piece of mischief calculated to send Tony fully over the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity, and he was eating ice cream.

Since Loki's body could only handle dairy (and about a million other things) while pregnant, he took full advantage.

Loki did love his ice cream.

"Tony, beloved," his husband said gently, swinging down his mile-long legs and patting the sofa cushion beside him. "I realize this is all a great deal to absorb. Would you care for some gelato? Or intimacy?"

Tony glared again.

With a final lick of his spoon and a sigh, Loki transported the remains of his dessert to the kitchen. The freezer door shut with a quiet thwack. The spoon rinsed itself and settled into the sink.

"Please sit, _hjarta hjarta minn_?" Loki asked, in the same maddeningly reasonable voice.

Tony sat, but tried to convey it wasn't because he wanted to. He was just displaying good manners.

"You made up the letters. Kurt chucked them down the chimney. So, okay, hahaha. Big joke on Tony—but what about the boys, Lok? You saw how excited they got. They love those books, and the thought that..."

Loki touched one long, elegant index finger gently to Tony's lips.

"What?"

"If I understand your reasoning, husband, the World-Under-the-World, the Wizarding World, its traditions and its institutions of learning, cannot exist for the reason that they are chronicled in a popular series of novels. Does Asgard, then, where you have walked in your own person, which you have seen and touched and smelt, also not exist?"

"Um, that's..."

"Different?" Loki queried. "How so, Tony? Please explain. I write of Asgard, once my home, in a popular series of books. Joanne wrote of Hogwarts and the magical world. She is a talented historian with an excellent eye for detail, a wonderfully gifted word-witch, and I greatly admire her skill. She adds to the safety of the citizens of her world not only by hiding them within plain view, but by demonstrating to the world at large, to the Muggles in Britain, the No Majs here in America, to those without magic, whatever they may be called, the whole world over, that magic need not be a thing of darkness, that by far the greater part of those who walk that path serve the ways of light.

"As citizens of the British Isles, future protectors, perhaps, of that country, it is our children's right to be taught at Hogwarts, to learn the traditional disciplines of Merlinic Craft in that land, that thereby they may better serve all citizens of Asgard and Jötunnheimr, The Americas and the Country of Our Queen. Wizarding tradition runs parallel to our own traditions, and to know its ways might well avail our younglings, proving useful to them at divers times. I have taught them the rudiments, now they should learn from those to whom the skills are native and instinctual. As a scholar, though their Craft is well known to me in an intellectual way, I would desire to gain that instinct as a complement to my own natural _seiðr_ , as I also desire to better learn of the wizarding people and their ways. Particularly..."

Loki's fingertips traced gently around the curve of Tony's ear and, as usual, he found the touch soothing, and lulling, and all other sorts of sweet things. Things Tony didn't necessarily want to be feeling at that particular moment in time.

"I would never wound our children," Loki added, in a not-quite-hurt tone, turning on Tony those big, green, oh-so-filled-with-feeling eyes. "Never. This you must surely know of me, Tony. Neither—though you also well know I will wind you up, now and then--neither would I, by any willing deed, injure you, my husband and my dearest beloved.

"Consider this, that there are children in this world I might help, as I have long helped my children at the Club of Boys and Girls. What of those children like our Fen, as filled with magic as their brothers and sisters, yet unable to follow their same paths of learning? What of those children named 'Squibs' by their peers, born to magical families, yet raised to believe themselves useless? What if their innate talents lie deeper, and require a more careful unlocking? Then, too, what of the wickedness in the world, that did not die altogether when the evil of their enemy was extinguished, but may yet linger in divers hidden places? These things I understand, Tony. I can help. I will help. And well you know, with our younglings far off in another country, how your sorrow would grow, as it already grows for Sleip, who has not yet left us. You would pine for them, were they far from us, and be inconsolable. As it is, should we accept these invitations, you may be near them, as may I, and you may teach their schoolfellows much of interest about your world, whilst learning also much of theirs, for the greater stimulation, perhaps, of your imagination."

Loki took Tony's hands, long cool slender fingers curling around his much stubbier, squarer ones, and just like that, he knew.

It was real.

It was all real.

"Are you a word-wizard, Lok?" he asked his husband. "You certainly have a way of convincing me."

"I am not a wizard at all," Loki chastised gently. "I am a god."

"Well, of course you are," Tony teased, leaning over, as an apology for freaking out, to kiss his husband's cheek. "Silly me."

"Silly you, indeed," Loki agreed. "It will be fun, Tony, and you have needed fun. We have become routine—not boring, by any means, but routine. And now, my love, we shall go adventuring."

"At a school?" Tony asked, skeptical.

"Why not? We have ever made our own adventures." Loki placed his hand, angled like a roof, onto the top of Tony's head. "I shall sort you into Gryffindor."

"Why's that?" Tony asked. "Just out of curiosity."

"You are reckless, brave and great-hearted." Loki laughed. "And, of course, you must always be the star of every show."

"So not true!" Tony protested.

"So entirely true!" Loki answered laughing, "And yet, for always, Slytherin loves Gryffindor."

Loki's lips pressed sweetly to Tony's, still tasting of strawberry ice cream.

"How are you Slytherin? Slytherin is evil! You're not evil! Why aren't you Ravenclaw—or for that matter, my fellow Avenger, Gryffindor with me? Not Slytherin, and especially, not evil."

"Only drawn in such a manner," Loki answered, and for just a second the shadows that never entirely left him fell across his face.

"Lok?" Tony said.

"For the first item," his husband forged on, "I am able to fluently speak Parseltongue, language of serpents. For the next, I am crafty and clever, also highly persuasive in my speech, able both to obtain what I wish and do as I wish. None of which means I have not a heart, that I do not love you, always, in truth and adoration, that our children are not the hearts of my heart. Only..." His visible eye twinkled. "Do you think I might, appropriately, ask Lucius Malfoy for the name of his tailor if his clothing is as excellently made in reality as that displayed in the films? His attire suits him so finely, I'm struck with admiration. It's positively.... luscious. Whether I would or no, Muggle clothing is dull, and I yearn."

"Luscious Lucius?" Tony found himself dissolving into giggles as his world-view took another major smack in the head and he just fell into accepting it, all of it, yet again for no better reason than... well...

Because Loki.

"Kinda love you, my crazy snake-charmer."

"And I love you twice as well, my Lion."

"Lion? Christ, Lok, you'll make me confuse my fantasy worlds. You'll make me feel like I'm a Lannister, or something. I do always pay my debts."

"How can you be a Lannister, when you are a Stark?" Loki fanned himself languidly, the air-conditioning never seeming to do him as much good as it did everyone else. It was like, for Loki, air conditioning didn't matter, if the temperature hit a certain mark outdoors, he felt hot. "How I wish winter was coming!"

"Just wait until you're in a drafty haunted castle, with no central heating, in November, and we'll see what your thoughts are." Something struck Tony. "So, babe, if Asgard is real, and Avalon is real, and Hogwarts..."

"Not real," Loki answered firmly. "That world, Westeros, where songs of ice and fire are sung, is a place born only of imagination, as are Narnia and Neverland. The Histories of Middle-Earth—Midgard by another name—are, I suspect, relics of a not-long-distant cycle partially remembered out of time, in the same manner as my always-and-never-daughter, Queen Hela of the Dismal Lands, exists out of her original time. Discworld has never existed. Prydain is but Wales in the High Old Days. Oz is a phenomenally annoying place if one is to visit, with its people of paper and people of china and those with aesthetically unappealing flat heads, though I once kept quite a charming flying monkey from those lands as a pet—blue he was, and no larger than my hand, wonderfully adept at tying Thor's hair into monstrously complicated knots as he slept. Wonderland is even more irritating, and if you can last there more than a quarter hour without the greatest desire to put the entire place to the torch, then you are of greater patience than I.

"But Camelot..." Loki's voice dropped low. "Oh, Tony, Camelot was a dream, but no less real for being one." He flashed Tony a quick sad smile, a rare reminder (because usually Loki seemed so young and inquisitive, so caught up in life and enthused about absolutely goddamn everything) of the weight of years his husband actually carried.

"Yes, that was Kurt on the phone," Loki said, after some time passed. "He thinks we might enjoy a change. He knows I need, from time to time, to walk amongst history."

"We have history," Tony teased, just to elicit the Loki eye-roll, but Loki only laid his head on Tony's shoulder and sighed, causing sleeping Mopsi to wake up and abandon his pillow. The little dog jumped onto Loki's golden lap instead, to have his velvet ears and deep wrinkles caressed by his master's clever fingers.

The little beast gave Tony an accusing look with his brown bulging eyes, and Tony unwound his tail out straight, letting it snap back into a spiral again. It didn't hurt Mops a bit, and it reminded Tony of the birthday-party noisemakers of his childhood. He'd never played with one of his own, so maybe this was his delayed gratification.

Mopsi, at this point, turned over onto his back, all four paws in the air, and commenced snoring like a sawmill running at triple speed.

"Do you want me to look into quarantine regulations for your noise-beast?" Tony asked, reaching out to draw circles with his fingertip on the little dog's plushy tummy. At Loki's look of horror, he added, "I mean, he's had all his shots and his check-ups." Another wince from Loki. Hmn.

"There's probably stuff we can do to hurry him through. And I got that the first look meant separation anxiety. What was that second look for?"

"What are your thoughts on the _Queen Mary II_?"

"I'm not sure if I have any. Or have had. Ever."

"The passage is only eight days, beloved."

Eight days. Five kids. One dog. Pregnant Loki. And him. At sea.

 _I shall run mad_ , Tony thought.

Which only made his husband look miserable.

Tony didn't like miserable on Loki, even less so when he'd been the one to put that particular look on his husband's face.

"Your eye?" Tony guessed. He'd been kind of busy trying not to throw up on Hank McCoy's giant furry feet while Loki's doctor explained the procedure, but he did remember the words "inflating" and "explode." The latter being paired with, "don't fly or the eye may."

"You could fly over to join us when you will," Loki said, kindly trying to give him an out. "Kurt's offered to accompany me, if necessary, and Thea certainly will, to help with the children."

"Nah. Adventure. Right, babe? A family adventure—though bring whoever you want, by all means."

"And that is why you are a Gryffindor, beloved," Loki told him. "You are a man of valor."

"You ought to ask Bruce," he added, seconds later, out of the blue. "He's been so sad, though I know not every reason, and you'll want someone..." A grin flickered at the corners of his lips. "Someone normal."

"Just so you know, I'm starting work on a tech-driven flying broom. Like, as of tonight. It will kick your superior magical asses. You will be fucking amazed."

"No doubt," Loki answered. His expression could be read as one of highly superior amusement, but not his words. "For it is true—I frequently am amazed, dearest love, by all you accomplish."


	3. Et tu, Bruce?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki interrupts Bruce's inventory duties to issue an invitation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elizabeth "Betty" Ross, daughter of General Thaddeus Ross (known Hulk-hater) is a canon girlfriend--and later, wife--of Bruce Banner in the comics. Their history together is long, complex, and often a little too far-fetched for even my comics-loving brain to quite accept. Still, I figured that if poor Bruce had to be pining over somebody, it ought to be Betty.
> 
> Natalie Merchant, the former singer for 10,000 Maniacs later found success as a solo act. In recent years, much of her work has been strongly influenced by traditional music. Michael Stipe was the singer for R.E.M., a band whose early albums, especially, showed heavy traditional influences. I heard him sing a snippet of "The Counting Song" as a coda to one of the band's originals all the way back in 1984, when I was but a young thing. The Irish roots of the version quoted have been thoroughly filtered through the American South.
> 
> "Assuming I'm right--and I invariably am..." is a quote from the Fourth Doctor, in _Doctor Who._ Ah, Tom Baker--you never forget your first Doctor.
> 
> A "Sharpie" is a felt-tipped permanent marking pen.
> 
> Ants naturally contain folic acid, otherwise known as vitamin B9. Getting enough folic acid during pregnancy helps prevent spinal cord-related birth defects of the spinal cord and/or brain, such as spina bifida or anencephaly.
> 
> "You are cordially invited" is a standard formal opening to certain invitations (such as to a wedding or fancy party). It's meant to convey that the host(s) not only want you to attend, they're implying that they not only value your attendance, they wish to send warm wishes your way while doing so.
> 
> I remember a review for _The English Patient_ (circa 1996), back in the day, in which the reviewer talked about experiencing a sudden, overwhelming desire to shop at Ralph Lauren. I understood the feeling--a sudden craving for khaki and crisp white linen.
> 
> "dad shorts"=high-waisted, baggy and unflattering shorts

* * *

Bruce allowed himself to sink deeply into his weekly inventory of the infirmary supplies. Sure, he numbered bean-counting (or bandage-counting, as the case might be) as possibly his very least favorite of all his least-favorite jobs, but the upside remained that, of all those tasks, inventory came the closest to making his brain shut off completely (putting aside the question of whether he really should have been paying some sort of attention), and not thinking also meant not brooding.

For everyone's sake, he tried hard not to brood.

Bruce had set his StarkPad to play random tunes, the kind he liked but Tony wouldn't allow in the lab, in the interest of helping himself hold on to what questionably remained of his sanity, when over the music he caught the whoosh of the elevator, followed a clickety-clickety-click on the outer corridor's tile floor, like someone typing unusually fast on an old fashioned typewriter.

He found himself grinning, knowing an only-too-welcome distraction would soon present itself.

"Mops, dearest," Loki's voice said from just outside the infirmary door. "Sit here, if you will?"

 _Only Loki_ , Bruce thought, with a pleasant feeling of liking, of warmth--the kind of warmth he might have felt for a little brother, if he'd had one. Only Loki.

All the times when he'd felt cranky, impatient, contemptuous—or even been downright cruel to the Asgardian king, as he knew he had been, he really had, not once but over and over again--now seemed infinitely distant, as if those emotions had belonged to an entirely different Bruce.

Surviving alone together in a hostile foreign dimension would, he guessed, tend to do that to a person.

The truth was, Tony was great, and Tony was his dearest friend, but if anyone got him, if there was anyone Bruce could talk to, really talk to, about his past, about life, and expect an understanding listener, that person was Loki. Being just kind of absorbed into their crazy, beautiful family the way he had been was, Bruce had to admit, among the best things that ever happened to him, in a life that had contained more not-so-good things than he really cared to ponder.

That much would have been true even if Loki hadn't, more or less, handed him the switch that allowed him to invite The Other Guy to join him at will, the switch that allowed him to fight alongside his big green self, instead of fearing him, or struggling against him.

He'd come to understand a lot, by living. By finally daring to live.

Appropriately, just then, the words:

 _'Round and 'round on the wheel of fortune;_  
_'Round and 'round on the wheel in me_  
_Young women's hearts are so uncertain,_  
_And sad experience teaches me..._

Came warbling through the StarkPad, and Bruce's more positive thoughts flew away, replaced by thoughts of Betty--Betty with her soft dark hair and big, kind dark eyes, that he'd sometimes just lost himself in. Thoughts that smacked into him for maybe the millionth time that week, that month, that year, making it impossible not only to think, but even to breathe.

Betty, who he'd somehow managed to mess things up with, unbelievably, when he'd thought this might be it, the it he'd dreamed of all his life, that magical, mystical, impossible _it_. That Betty might finally be his one, his only one, his now and his always.

"Ah, ' _The Counting Song_ ,'" came Loki's voice. "Also known as ' _Wheel of Fortune_ ' or ' _Dublin City_ ,' and sung in this instance, assuming I'm right..."

 _And I invariably am_ , Bruce added in his head, because why not have a _Doctor Who_ moment when dealing with an ageless, beyond-brilliant alien (or god, as the case might be)? Besides, when it came to facts and factoids, Loki did tend to be correct. It was kind of his thing.

"By Natalie Merchant and Michael Stipe singing in tandem, yes?" Loki continued. Seconds later, one bright green eye peered around the edge of the doorway, accompanied by a small wedge of smile.

"Encyclopedic as usual, Lok."

"Bruce, Mopsi and I were most horribly bored." The rest of Loki's smiling face appeared. It also appeared that, in his boredom, he'd begun to decorate his eye-patch with elaborate Norse knot-work--probably done free-hand, knowing Loki--in gold Sharpie."We had not the best of nights, and were meant to be resting. However, everyone's left us!" The smile brightened. "But you are not gone, dear friend! Does a task of great importance currently involve you?"

"Nothing that won't allow me to talk, Loki. And, actually, you can help." Bruce switched off the music-- Loki could be distractable, now and then.

"It would be my greatest pleasure!" Loki told him, and hopped up onto the end of the nearest exam bed. "Shall we now complete the numbering together?"

"My friend, you'd save both my life and sanity."

Loki grinned. It had taken him awhile, but he'd now learned Bruce was joking when he said that kind of thing.

One by one, Bruce showed his visitor boxes, cupboards, bins, jars, tubes. For each, Loki gave a precise and (Bruce knew) completely accurate count of its contents. It was kind of Loki's party trick. The god of mischief might now and then have a hard time adding two plus two (an exaggeration, more or less, kind of--but not by much), but with one quick, almost off-handed, glance he could tell exactly how many whatevers any given container contained.

Loki was no longer allowed to play the "Guess the Number of Coffee Beans in the Jar" game for free coffee at Rosenblum's Deli downstairs. Neither was Tony, who'd used him to cheat now and then. Because Tony was, of course, Tony, and it wasn't a matter of free coffee, it was testing Loki's skill.

Tony had been trying to figure out how his husband did it for years. Not that "how" mattered, not to Loki. It was just what he did. A Loki thing.

"Okay," Bruce told him, "Since you're supposed to be resting, will you rest, please? I need to replenish the stock. Your dog's being dramatic out there, by the way."

This was true—there was something a bit... Disneyesque about Mopsi, and Bruce wondered if he'd been enhanced in some subtle way, the way Phil's Anastasia appeared to have been (not to mention Tony's 'bots), or if both dogs found it such a relief to have someone around who understood their every thought and wish that it had turned them into high achievers of the canine species.

"Do you want me to put a bowl of water down for him?"

"You are kind," Loki answered, by which he which meant "yes."

Bruce half-filled an unused kidney-shaped emesis basin with cool water and set it down for the little dog, who waddled over and immediately started to sound like he was trying to vacuum the liquid up through his nostrils.

Laughing, Bruce trundled one of the restock carts back from the storeroom across the hall and set about his business, referring to his StarkPad for numbers now and then, as Loki, a Tupperware box resting on his chest as he lounged, snacked contentedly on veggies and hummus.

"It is times like this I envy my brother." Loki sighed—Mopsi not being the only dramatic one--between crunches. "Oh, for days of old!"

Loki had on shorts—so did Bruce. The temperatures had climbed way too high to think of wearing anything else.

Loki's, however, were perfectly-fitted khaki Bermudas, worn with a crisp, short-sleeved, white linen button-down. He looked like he belonged in _The English Patient_. Bruce's were dad shorts, paired with a faded black tee that read, "Never trust atoms—they make up everything!"

Bruce laughed again, and gave Loki's bare knee a little squeeze in passing. The squeeze, with a different guy, might have felt a little strange, even inappropriate—but as previously mentioned, Loki was Loki. Ordinary behavior, where he was concerned, just seemed to fly out the window.

"I suspect you don't really mean that," Bruce said. "About the old days, that is."

"Most likely I do not." Loki grinned, that little flashing Puckish grin of his, his one visible green eye glancing up from beneath its lashes. "In some ways, these times are easier. When one heals instantaneously, one is expected to meet pain headlong, and yet pain is still pain."

"It still hurts."

"Precisely." Loki met his eyes. "I wanted to ask you, Bruce...? Is it true, as Pepper relates, that for human women there is a stick of urination which will indicate...?" Loki spread his long, narrow hand across his perfectly flat belly.

Bruce grinned. For a thousand-year-old being from an advanced world, Loki could be oddly... delicate about certain things. "Is this a roundabout way of asking me about your blood test, Loki?"

His visitor sat up to nod at him, his expression earnest and a little shy. "I do not mean to importune, or trouble you, dear friend. Only, if it is complete..."

"Really, Lok, no trouble. And yes, the test is done, and the answer is a definite yes, as I suspect you already know."

Loki made a soft humming sound, then flopped back onto the exam bed again, knees in the air, hair spreading out in a black fan around his head.

"Any back pain this time?" Bruce asked. "How's the morning sickness?"

"Blarg," Loki answered emphatically, poking the pink tip of his tongue out between his lips.

"Blarg?" Bruce repeated.

"No other word exists. The process is ridiculous. If I must consume as much nourishment as inhumanly possible in order to make my baby grow strong and in good health, why must my body simultaneously, in the first months, seek to expel half the morsels I feed it? It is nonsensical."

"Have a banana," Bruce said, and passed the fruit to Loki, who consumed it with an air of martyrdom.

"I despise bananas," Loki groused.

"They have lots of potassium, which you need." Bruce grabbed his StarkPad and slid up onto the end of the bed, opening the med app to flip through the screens of Loki's chem reports. "Pretty much everything looks good still, but I'm going to supplement your folic acid."

"Appropriate," Loki said. "Yesterday morning, at the park with Edwin, I found myself suddenly eyeing a trail of ants as if they were delectable bon bons. Instinct is an odd thing, is it not?"

"Well, many cultures do eat ants," Bruce answered, "And it's true, they are rich in folic acid. As are leafy green vegetables."

"My culture is not amongst them," Loki replied haughtily. "And so I shall avail myself of your supplements. And eat kale salad, though the texture is unpleasant, or spinach, or such." A hopeful look crossed his face. "Are they gummies?"

Bruce laughed. "They can be."

"I like the small bears best," Loki mentioned, still hopeful, in his best, "not that I really care, but..." voice.

"Then gummy bears you shall have," Bruce told him, still laughing. He suspected Loki of doing this deliberately, all of it. That he'd come down in the first place not so much because he'd felt bored, but because he felt Bruce brooding after all, losing himself in loss and misery.

Out of nowhere, suddenly, Loki produced an envelope. A creamy, you-are-cordially-invited, kind of envelope--and, once more, Bruce found himself distracted.

"Someone I know?" he asked.

He still felt bad, really bad, all these years later, that he'd blown off Tony and Loki's wedding. He loved them so much now, loved their family so much, had hated, even back then, seeing the hurt in Tony's eyes upon receipt of his flat, "No. No way."

Some things Bruce wanted so badly to take back, and yet he never, never could.

 _Betty,_ he thought. _Oh, God, my sweet, sweet Betty. I'm so sorry. I'm really, really sorry. I wish I was a better man. I wish to hell I'd never been broken, but I was, and this whole process of healing is so long, and slow, and strange..._

Bruce realized Loki's arms had twined around his shoulders, Loki's head resting quietly against his.

"It is a terrible thing to feel unworthy. To be told again and again you are unworthy," Loki said. "However, the words being spoken aloud do not make them true. You are worthy, Bruce. You are loved. And you must come with us to Britain. I insist."

 _Say what?_ Bruce thought.

Loki tapped the envelope with one elegant index finger. "There is no marriage to be celebrated. Read, please."

Bruce glanced at the address on the front and couldn't stop himself from laughing yet again.

"'Testament to His Husband's Ego?' Tony must have loved that."

"Not overmuch," Loki answered—but he still grinned, and one of his more wicked grins, too. "Peruse the letter within, dear friend."

Bruce perused. To start with, the letter appeared to be about a meter long, handwritten on what could have easily passed for actual parchment. The language itself... well, "flowery" didn't quite cover it. Some of the words appeared Latinate, but weren't exactly Latin. As for the subject matter...

"This seems like a pretty elaborate joke, Loki," Bruce ventured.

Loki shook his head gravely.

"Really? _Really?_ What does Tony say?"

"He has his own invitation, for the teaching of Muggle Studies, and he would miss the children so... I have spoken at length with dear Pepper, and she will work out—what is the word Tony uses?--logistics? Yes, logistics. I ought to be able to manage a connection to the aether..."

 _That is, the internet, in Loki-speak_ , Bruce reminded himself.

"Documents, if required, may be brought by messenger to Hogsmeade, the village that lies nearby. 'Needs must when Queen Hela drives the cart,' as they say. All may be managed, do you not think?"

 _Needs must...?_ Bruce wondered.

"Honestly, I'm still mostly struggling with the 'Hogwarts is real' thing," he said, pulling off his glasses and polishing them on his shirt a little more thoroughly than absolutely necessary.

He knew Loki well by now—the previously mentioned months spent together in a parallel universe. Loki might be god of mischief, he might play tricks and pranks and joke about certain (many) things, but others...

Anything that seriously affected his family was, for Loki, strictly off limits. This affected his family in a big way, therefore...

Therefore, Loki was telling him the truth. The letter was real, Hogwarts was real, and Loki, with absolute earnestness (big green eye and all) had just issued him his own invitation.

Only a crazy man would say "no" to that, and Bruce might be emotionally fragile, not to say damaged, but there was no way in hell he was turning down an actual invitation to actual Hogwarts.

"Loki, my friend," he answered, feeling more or less the way (he imagined, needless to say he had no practical experience) a five-year-old would feel upon discovering his parents had planned an impromptu trip to Disneyland. "Then answer is not only yes, it's hell, yes! When do we go?"

Bruce found himself suddenly tangled up in miles of Loki-arms and Loki-legs, a little more thoroughly embraced even than was usual with his Asgardian friend. He hugged Loki back as best he could, holding him until his best-loved Norse god had calmed down enough to murmur in his ear. "Oh, Bruce, you have made me so happy! Nothing in the adventure would be so pleasant were you not to be there!

For those who enjoyed Bruce's t-shirt: [Don't trust atoms tee](https://www.redbubble.com/people/caretta/works/23956338-dont-trust-atoms?p=t-shirt)

And some pictures: [Anastasia (wearing her ears down)](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7kpv0OFzdPc/Ux9ac4FGYSI/AAAAAAAABiM/PgNVyeNob-U/s1600/harlequin+Great+Dane.jpg)

                               [and cover-boy Mopsi (aka The Noise-Beast)](https://www.calendars.com/Black-Pugs-Wall-Calendar/prod201500005081/)


	4. Won't You Let Me Take You on a Sea Cruise?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony, Loki and family's adventures on the Queen Mary 2. Let there be fluff!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although the Frankie Ford and Johnny Rivers versions are better known, the song _"Sea Cruise"_ was originally written and recorded by Huey "Piano" Smith in 1957.
> 
> Many of us undoubtedly became familiar with "the sinister triple dog dare" from one of the ultimate holiday films, _A Christmas Story_. It seems my friends and I were timid children, because we never progressed beyond the mildly-daring double dog dare.
> 
> The Queen Mary 2 docks in the Hampshire city of Southampton on the south coast of England, about 75 miles (121 km) southwest of London.
> 
> Rahne Sinclair is a Scottish werewolf in the X-Comics, formerly the ward of Moira MacTaggart.
> 
> Loki's quoting the poem, " _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_ ", by T.S. Eliot. The "mermaid bit" is as follows:
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each._  
>  _I do not think that they will sing to me._  
>  _I have seen them riding seaward on the waves_  
>  _Combing the white hair of the waves blown back_  
>  _When the wind blows the water white and black._  
>  _We have lingered in the chambers of the sea_  
>  _By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown_  
>  _Till human voices wake us, and we drown._
> 
>  
> 
> Poor Loki, still being tormented by his husband about the eye-patch. Ciel Phantomhive is the boy protagonist of the anime series and manga _Black Butler_. Unlike Loki's, his patch conceals the pentagram that marks his contract with his demon butler, Sebastian ("Sebastian," in Japan, apparently is the cliche butler name, rather like "Jeeves" in Western countries--even though Jeeves was a valet, not a butler).
> 
> "addressing the aether merely to assay searches"=going online just to run searches, as translated from the Lokiese.
> 
> We'll assume Mrs. Ransome is working on a "story quilt" or "journal quilt," with a block chronicling each stage of her adventure.
> 
> A caldera is a large volcanic crater caused by a violent eruption.
> 
> A "magnet school" focuses on an academic or artistic area of interest, in order to attract high-achieving students in that field.
> 
> In the 1902 supernatural short story, " _The Monkey's Paw_ ," by author W. W. Jacobs, the traditional three wishes are granted to the owner of the monkey's paw, but instead of making the wisher happy, the wishes come with an enormous cost for having interfered with fate.
> 
> In quilting terms, a "fat quarter" of fabric is a 1/4 yard cut that generally measures around 18" x 22". By contrast, a regular 1/4 yard cut is 9" x 44".
> 
> A watercolor painter's field kit is usually a neat little box with a lid that snaps down. It contains a small brush, a limited number of colors in cake form, and often a tiny bottle to hold water. It's perfect for throwing in a bag or backpack and painting on the fly.
> 
> The J.A. Henckel Co. mainly makes high-quality chef's knives. The forging process makes the steel, harder, more durable, and able to take a sharper edge.

* * *

“Shall I?” Loki asked, laughing, gorgeous in the moonlight. “Shall I?”

“I triple dog dare you, Lok,” Tony answered, laughing with him. “Just remember, though, if I’m lying on a piece of wreckage perfectly big enough to fit two, you’re staying in the water. I require my space, you know.”

“Ha! You forget that I am half of the _Jötunn_ kind! I shall easily tread water, and also mock you, as I serenade you throughout the hours of darkness with the many songs of Miss Celine Dion.”

“Argh! You’ve got me! The wreckage is all yours. Death is infinitely preferable.”

Loki grinned at him, and Tony grinned back. He felt… what was the word? Giddy, maybe?--though that didn’t even begin to encompass his relief that the tornado of paperwork, passports, visas for him and Bruce (who’d fly in to join them once they reached London) had come to an end, and here they were, all safe aboard the _Queen Mary 2_ , and Southampton bound.

What better way to celebrate the voyage than by recreating a couple of _Titanic’s_ most ridiculous moments?

Forget the old thumbs up and thumbs down system, Tony now judged a movie by the number of times his husband announced, “That is nonsensical!” as the plot unspooled.

The movie _Titanic_ was Loki’s personal best, with a record fifty-seven nonsensicals! four outright scoffs, and half-a-dozen truly epic Loki eye-rolls.

Loki held out his elegant pale hands, palms forward. “You will witness, beloved, unstained by ink at last! And just when I believed they would never be clean.”

“And that was just the Muggle shit. Not your top secret Owl Post missives.”

The truth was, Tony couldn’t help but be curious. Loki had written a couple mysterious letters, contents unknown, one of which he’d rolled into a scroll, sealed with wax, and stamped with a fucking signet ring Tony hadn’t even known his husband possessed. The ring had a cut-in design of a raven (an “intaglio,” Loki called it) and some weird words made all the weirder for being written backwards in order to stamp the right way around.

And, speaking of weird, that letter was collected, from outside on the terrace, by an Arctic owl the size of a goddamn Rottweiler. Tony had actually shrieked when the thing caught air directly over his head.

“Loki, what the…?” he’d gasped, only just managing to edit himself as Edwin came skipping outside, yelling, “G’bye wowl!” at full volume and waving both his little pink hands.

Loki scooped him up so that they could wave goodbye together, watching the huge creature weave gracefully between the skyscrapers.

There’d also been a last check-up for Mopsi, who returned home with an indignant expression on his little squooshed-in face, and each of the kids had a visit with Dr. Hank McCoy in Salem Center, which they totally didn’t mind (shots aside), because a visit to the X-Mansion was like summer camp to them, a place where Fen could get Big and play hide and seek with Logan and Rahne, and Jöri had marvelous adventures dragoning out and being WWI flying aces with his buddy Rico, a sweet kid unfortunately born with the looks of a giant flying termite.

Not for the first time, Tony wondered if the kids would have been happier there at the Jean Grey School than they’d been at Stark Academy, where the only gift they didn’t have to hide was their intelligence. At Hogwarts, at least, they could now be smart _and_ magical—even though, as Loki explained, it was a different kind of magic—and Fen and Jöri could call themselves “Animagi,” even though they weren’t, not really.

Tony wondered what little Ed would be someday, besides off-the-charts smart, when it stopped being funny hearing bursts of trilingual college professor vocabulary from his toddler mouth. He thought of the JARVIS who’d been, of how he himself had been such a flawed and far-from-omniscient creator, and hoped that restless intelligence, that driven spirit, was happy now in its new vessel, so cared for, and so loved.

Loki stepped up to the lowest bar of the railings and balanced there, the headwinds wild in his long black hair, laughing as he leaned into the vee of the bow, his arms stretched back as he cried, “I am the king of the world!” It took him a moment to restrain his laughter, but then he called again into the night, “I am the king of the world!”

The gods help him, right there behind Loki on the steel deck, Tony knelt. He couldn’t help himself.

Loki bounded down, turning gracefully around to catch Tony in the act, the expression on his face changing, becoming partly amused and partly sad.

“In the end, I will always kneel?” Tony tried.

“Not funny,” Loki told him, odd expression still firmly in place.

He raised Tony to his feet again as easily as ever—whatever Doom had done to Loki’s healing abilities, he still had the bones and muscles of a _Jötunn/Aesir_ hybrid, which made him almost as strong as Thor and nearly three times as fast.

He wasn’t angry, though, Tony felt that clearly in the brush of his husband’s mind against his own. He was only… he thought, maybe, "pensive" was the right word, now that New York had long since slipped out of sight behind the horizon, maybe it was right that Loki remembered great joy, and confusing defeat, and unfathomable self-hatred, all the things The City That Never Sleeps had meant to him.

Tony slipped his arms around Loki’s waist, kissing the soft, sensitive skin of his throat, feeling Loki’s thoughts curl into his mind, _You may certainly kneel later, in our stateroom, if you choose._

To stifle his laughter, Tony pressed his face into his husband’s black velvet-covered chest--because after all, this was Loki, which meant that, aside from his impeccable European-cut suits and couture evening wear expressly designed for him by his good friend, top-ranked avant garde designer Darius King, he dressed, in general, like some strange hybrid mixture of Bollywood, a Shakespeare play, and the kind of clothes rocked by Bowie and Mercury, circa 1973—on Loki, it somehow totally fucking worked.

Ordinary mortals, trying to copy his look, weren’t so fortunate. A certain _Vanity Fair_ issue had tried to do exactly that, and Loki had written them a polite letter inquiring, as only Loki could, why they’d opted not to run their April Fools Issue in April?

They’d tried to make it up to him with a piece on _Spellwerki_ , Hela’s company, but as yet Loki remained unappeased.

By moonlight, Tony’s arm around his husband’s waist, Loki’s arm around Tony’s shoulders, they strolled along the promenade and the whispers followed them. A few were, “Was that Tony Stark and his husband?” but far more seemed to be, “Was that Lo Stark? Oh, isn’t he lovely! Just as lovely as I’ve heard!”

Tony, for all his time spent in Malibu, was nothing if not a New Yorker through-and-through. He wasn’t unfriendly, he just subscribed to the New Yorker code, which said that you greeted people you knew, all others were invisible unless on fire or something, in which case he’d put them out, summon help, and be on his way. Back home, out with Tony or the children, or even on his own, Loki gave directions to lost tourists. He talked to strangers about their kids or their dogs, where they came from, what they did there. If someone looked or sounded interesting, he’d ask if he could photograph, or sketch, them, and he got into involved conversations with all kinds of people he’d never met before in his life, in a variety of languages, and no one, ever, not once, thought that was strange.

When Tony (slightly embarrassed, he had to admit) asked him why he did it, Loki answered him, “Because, beloved, they are not ants, and never were, and this is both my joy and my atonement.”

Seconds later, a single, heavy tear rolled down his cheek.

Loki never talked about those days, not anymore, but he carried them with him, Tony knew he did.

“No sad thoughts, please, _hjarta hjarta minn_ ,” Loki said quietly, smiling and nodding at the people they passed, even greeting, in a soft, secret, nighttime way, those he’d met previously.

“I love you,” Tony told him, and Loki gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“I love you equally, beloved.”

They moved to the rail, gazing out at the moon reflected in the rippling dark Atlantic. “Do you hear the mermaids singing, each to each?” He tipped back his head, eyes shut, long hair unfurling on the wind, looking rather merman-like himself.

"Poetry, Lok? Really? With me?”

“No, I meant the _actual_ mermaids.” Loki gave a soft laugh. “They possess high and extremely piercing voices, as they must, to call over such range. They make my ears ring. Shall we go in?”

“You know, I can still never tell when you’re bullshitting me. Do you think I’ll ever be able?”

“I? ‘Bullshit?’ Never!” Loki’s eyes twinkled though. At least the good one did. The recently uncovered one looked red and sore.

“Time to put the eyepatch back on, Ciel Phantomhive.”

“I begin to suspect you, Tony, of addressing the aether merely to assay searches of notable characters who wore an eye-covering. Surely you may find better use for your time?”

“I’m the husband of the god of mischief. I have a lot to live up to.” Tony unlocked their suite door, ushering Loki in before him with a bow.

Smiles greeted them. Fen lay on the carpet, half-drowsing—or once more mesmerized by _Finding Nemo_ despite this being something like his millionth viewing—while Mopsi’s sleepy head rested on his tummy. Mrs. Ransome sat in the big chair, feet on an ottoman (both a footstool and an empire, as Thor might say) stitching something (she and Pepper had become quilting buddies) adorned with stylized waves and nautical symbols.

Meanwhile, deadly adversaries Hela and Jöri bent over the backgammon board, intent on mutual annihilation. They were evenly matched, those two, both brilliant, Jör's more logical, linear mind balanced against Hela’s steely determination and willingness to stake all on a calculated risk.

Tony gave them a grin, then tiptoed into the cabin Edwin shared with Fen. He sat carefully on the edge of his son’s twin bed, not wanting to wake the sleeping toddler, only to stroke his soft, dark hair, to lightly kiss his round cheek. The feeling rose in him that always rose at such times, a fiercely-burning, paternal love, a caldera of love so wide and deep it stretched straight to the center of the earth. He felt it for all his children, but most especially when they were like this, so little, so loving, so helpless. He’d do anything at all to protect them. Anything it took.

When he glanced up, he saw the missing member of their little group, Sleipnir, Crown Prince of Asgard, his eyes bright in the darkness, stretched out on Fen’s bed.

“Hey, Sleip,” Tony said softly.

“Daddy.” A pause followed as Sleip assembled his thoughts. Most likely he’d been half-asleep himself. “I like to watch over him, my brother. I hold the pictures in my mind, for the times ahead.”

“We’ve talked about this, Sleip. If you’re not ready…”

“I am the son of heroes,” his eldest answered. “It is only school I go to. How can I be afraid of school?”

“You know the ‘son of heroes’ thing is slightly bullcrap, right, buddy? I mean, you don’t have to be ready yet if you’re not ready. You’ve had a hell of a steep learning curve, and we all know how brave you are. You don’t have to prove anything to the sibs, or to _Pabbi_ , or to me.”

Spending six hundred years of his life as a fucking horse enslaved to his bastard of a great-grandpa would tend to mess up any boy.

“Yet, I have read much of Oxford, and long to go there.”

“Yeah.” Tony gave a dry laugh. “I kinda felt the same way about MIT. Though probably for opposite reasons.”

“You have never spoken of those days,” Sleip said, his face kind. You could tell that kid anything—anything true, that was, and he’d listen. He was another Kurt in the making.

Tony remembered when Sleipnir had first come to earth, and couldn’t use his hands or his fingers, because, except for the brief times Loki occupied the throne in Odin’s stead, he’d never had hands and fingers to use.

This boy. This beautiful, loving, good boy.

Tony knew he would hate Odin Allfather with a fiery burning hatred for every moment he lived. He was glad the bastard was dead, as he’d rarely been glad (at least in that ugly, angry way) of anything. He hadn’t even been as happy about good ol’ Uncle Obie’s passing, or for the final and utter breaking up of 10 Rings. Next to the Allfucker, those guys were nothing. Small potatoes.

"Now you are upset,” Sleipnir said, “And I am sorry.”

“No, honey, it wasn’t MIT, or anything you said. My train of thought derailed onto He Who Must Not Be Named. Ours, that is. Not Harry Potter’s.”

Sleip gave his soundless little laugh.

“The thing is, son, I thought of MIT as an escape, but it wasn’t. I’d have been way better off keeping the house open, paying Jarvis and Mrs. Cook’s wages and letting them look after me. Attending some science magnet school and doing ordinary, stupid teenage things. See, I was a genius, okay fine, but I was so completely screwed up mentally and emotionally, and I was only fifteen. Smart, screwed-up and fifteen aren’t the best combination. I thought I’d go to college and make friends. I thought I’d meet people like me, common interests and all that, but I was too smart—he said modestly…”

Tony caught Sleip’s small nod.

“Yeah, I was way too smart to be like anyone, and not even in a good way. I was scrappy. Arrogant, devoid of even a shred of humbleness or generosity—I had to learn those the hard way, and the gods know it wasn’t easy. I was also half-precocious, half-painfully-young, way too young to be anywhere near the level of wanting to do college kid things, and I’d never had a friend in my life who wasn’t a middle-aged servant, so imagine my total cluelessness. Then I also had Uncle Obie, who was supposed to be my mentor and friend, but instead sent me a case of scotch monthly. The result was a kid who was miserable, lonely, friendless and in pretty much a constant state of inebriation.

"I was a total train wreck, except, like my old man, I could still do engineering. If drunken engineering was an Olympic event, I could have gold medaled for the U.S.

"Fast-forward, what, something like thirty years? Sad to say, I still hadn’t changed all that much, except the smartass fifteen-year-old found himself in the body of a forty-five year old man, and I now had a giant international company and three real friends. One was--and is--your dear Auntie Pepper, first in my affections among the best ladies who ever lived, one's your Uncle Happy, who has a heart as big and as deep as the whole Atlantic Ocean, and one was this guy named Rhodey Rhodes. I think you met him once, by accident, so I guess, in the end, he wasn’t so much of a friend after all.”

Sleipnir sat up cross-legged on the bed. “But it may be that he misses you, Daddy. It may be he knows he hurt your heart, and doesn’t know how to say sorry. And surely, now, if he met _Pabbi_ …”

Yup, definitely Kurt in the making.

“You’re so good, Sleip,” Tony told his son. “I hope you know how much I love you.”

Sleipnir smiled at him, and his eyes shone, bright and dark all at once, like the reflection of the moon they’d watched floating over the waves.

“Oh!” he said suddenly. “ _Pabbi’s_ calling us. It’s time for the birthday cake.”

“Um…?” Tony asked.

“For Mrs Ransome. She thinks in all the turmoil we have forgotten, but we haven’t, of course.”

Tony laughed. “Speak for yourself, son.”

“We did not remind you.” Gods, Sleipnir’s laugh was just like Loki’s, Loki’s when he was most happy. “You are not to be trusted, _Pabbi_ says. You have been known to drop hints.”

“It’s like you guys know me, or something!” Tony wasn’t offended. They did know him, and he did drop hints. He couldn’t help himself.

He scooped up Edwin in his arms and held him on one shoulder, still sleeping, stepping out into the suite’s sitting area just as a pair of waiters rolled in the cake. The frosting was smooth and aqua-green, and a row of candy pearls circled the base, while numerous sea-creatures (mermaids included) swam up the sides. Topside, on rows of silver-edged blue waves, rested a perfectly-modeled _Queen Mary 2_.

Mrs Ransome clapped her hands together, and in that instant she looked about sixteen instead of sixty-one. “Oh, my darlings, it’s beautiful. How can I thank you?”

Loki turned his face to her, and Tony knew he’d said something tender, thankful, private. Something meant just for her. The faded blue of her eyes welled.

They sang to her in perfect harmony, even the waiters, even Tony (he’d found, in his time with Loki, his sense of pitch had improved tremendously, and he seriously suspected something had been tweaked, somewhere along the line). While the candles burned, Mrs. Ransome stood with her hands still clasped, her cheeks flushed, and the warm light flickering over her face.

She got the candles all in one breath, in part because Loki never would have been crass enough to decorate the cake with the full number. In fact, there were only seven candles in all, a six and a one for her age, maybe, or seven for the seven of them.

“You’ll get your wish,” Tony said with a grin.

Mrs Ransome glanced at him, smiling and serious all at once. “Don’t you know, Tony? It’s already been granted.

Loki took her hand, and squeezed it, smiling down at her, and Tony remembered what his husband told him. Mrs Ransome had only a daughter now, one who never seemed to want to approve of anything her mom said or did, or to even try to get along. This daughter had been born five years after her son, her first born, who had been a fire-fighter, a first responder on 9/11. A brave young man who’d gone into the smoke and the dust, and never came out again.

But Thea Ransome, far too wise to make a monkey’s-paw wish, knowing you can’t get back what’s truly lost, only push on as best you’re able, had nonetheless wished for a son.

And found for herself the most unlikely, and most loving, son possible.

She’d wished for a loving family, and she had one.

“Always, Thea,” Tony told her, through the giant lump in his throat. Was that the first time he’d used her given name? He thought, maybe, it was.

“Always,” he repeated, kissing one of her cheeks, while Loki bent down to kiss the other, and the boys tossed streamers into the air.

Hela snapped a picture.

It was beautiful. All of them were in it.

“Please just leave us the top two layers,” Thea said to the waiters. “We’d love for the staff to share the rest, with our thanks and compliments.”

Their servers cut neat slices for everyone (Loki got the small top layer to himself, but he passed the little ship to Thea to keep) and left, generous tips in their pockets.

It was excellent cake, almost as good as if their cook and honorary grandmother—ignoring for the moment the extremely small gap between her age and Tony’s—had baked it herself.

Little Ed was nodding off over his piece, but there was cake, and he would eat it, no delays allowed.

Loki held him on his lap, one arm wrapped protectively around their son, the other hand apparently trying not to be too obvious about its extreme need to feed his face.

At which point one of the waiters returned with a smile and a large plate of sandwiches, Tony having slipped him a note along with his tip.

“Beloved, you are wise in all things,” Loki said, moving on to more satisfying fare and a more comfortable seat on the couch as Tony took the baby from his arms and ferried their youngest, already sound asleep, off to bed again.

When he returned, the level of sandwiches had drastically fallen, and Thea had a pile of presents around her feet.

She opened perfume from Hela, a box of fabrics in thin rolls—apparently called “fat quarters” for reasons unknown--from Pepper, a box of German chocolates from Kurt, a book of watercolor postcards and a painter’s field kit from Sleip, a framed finger-painted work of art from Edwin that looked a lot more like a Van Gogh than like the painting of the average three-year-old, a new set of Henckel chef’s knives from Tony (along with a note that read “Not to be used on me, even when I’m especially annoying”), and a sweater, hand-knit out of Icelandic wool, from Fen and Jöri.

“Masters have given Dobby clothing!” Thea exclaimed, giggling. “Dobby is free!”

The boys, of course, both fell over laughing.

“ _Pabbi_ ,” Jöri asked, when he could speak again, “Where’s your present for Mrs. R.?”

“I believe the beautiful cake was my present, love,” Thea answered, reaching down to stroke the boy’s hair, “And the cunning little ship, which unless I’m much mistaken, he modeled to top it off.”

Loki blushed, squirmed a little, rotated the now-nearly-empty sandwich-plate a quarter turn, fussing to hide his feelings.

“Jör, we don’t ask, usually,” Tony said gently. “It’s kind of a personal thing, you know?”

“No, I…” Loki reached upward, into the air, his fingers, then his whole hand disappearing—which meant he was accessing one of his pocket universes, where he kept things too personal, or too dangerous for sharing. His staff being one.

The hand came back holding a large, slim book—a shape Tony recognized well, as six such books now held places of honor on their shelves, five for their five children, Edwin’s book being the latest, almost a Pinocchio story (minus the creepy shit), about a little robot boy who just longed to be real, and his loving creator, and the Mopsi and Anastasia story before that.

The cover said, in Loki’s gorgeous hand-lettering, “ _The Good Kitchen Witch_ ,” and held a picture of a tall black tower with its dunce-cap roof in the clouds, and a single high window out of which stared a sad-looking little blue gargoyle.

“'To my two mothers,'" Thea read aloud, “'To Wise Frigga, who loved me when I was an impossible boy, and to Kindest Thea, who loves and sustains me now that I am a difficult man, I offer this book in tribute. With the greatest respect and affection my heart can hold, Lo Stark.'” She turned the pages slowly, studying each picture, reading each word, and when she came to the end, her eyes were filled with tears.

“Oh, my dearest boy,” she said, giving Loki a slightly watery smile.

“C’mon, kids, it’s late, time to hit the hay,” Tony called out. “Tomorrow’s another day of adventure on the high seas.”

“Dad, you’re mixing metaphors again,” Hela said. She hugged and kissed Loki, hugged and kissed Tony, but was too mature now to want or need tucking in.

He saw Fen and Jöri through tooth-brushing, glad that they at least would be his for the tucking, for the next few days at least. Even Sleipnir, grown-up as he was, still liked to be walked to his door.

 _Hela_ , Tony thought, _You get to be young for such a short time. Try to enjoy it?_

His daughter probably heard, but she didn’t answer him.

Thea had gone to bed when he returned to the sitting room, but Loki was slumped on the sofa, looking droopy and teary and done-in.

“Babe?” Tony said. “How about you and I do a little hay-hitting too?”

“I want a shower first,” Loki answered. “I smell salty.”

“You probably got smacked by the spray when you were being king of the world.”

“’Tis true, that is a hazard of kingship.”

“Want me to join you?”

“I’m far too salty.”

“Maybe I’m salty too—won’t that bug you?”

“I like you salty.” Loki got up from the couch slowly, looking weary instead of graceful. “Yet not myself. I shan’t be long.”

“Shan’t you?” That was the closest Loki ever came to a contraction in his normal speech. Usually he avoided them like hot dogs from street vendors. “How ‘bout I toss the sandwiches in the fridge and give Mops a last meander?”

He’d long since learned not to utter any version of the verb “to walk” around Mopsi, because the merest whisper would drive the little dog in less than a second from asleep-and-snoring to batshit-insane. Weirdly, taking out the leash had nothing like the same reaction. He’d amble over to have it clipped to his collar as polite as could be.

“You are very weird, you know,” Tony told the pug, as they strolled together to an area planted with actual grass for exactly the purpose they intended.

Mopsi gave a low, gruff bark, as if to say, “I acknowledge your point.”

“However, Loki likes you.”

Another bark, slightly indignant.

“Yes, of course, I meant to say ‘loves.’ My mistake entirely. Loki loves you, and I love Loki, therefore I love you, only once removed, so to speak.”

An English guy, waiting for his own dog to complete its business on a neighboring patch of grass, asked, “Last walk for your Lord and Master?”

Tony had to chuckle. The man had a fawn pug on the end of his lead, a superior-looking lady pug wearing a pink collar adorned with rhinestone letters that spelled out the name “Mitzi.”

English guy laughed too. He knew—they both lived to serve.

On the way back to their suite, Tony told the dog, “Thank you for not wearing a pink collar with rhinestones.”

This time Mopsi’s bark clearly stated, “I could have one, if I wanted one. Loki would buy it for me.”

“I know,” Tony told him, “But thank you for not wanting one.”

Mopsi, released from his leash, went decorously to his cushion by the sofa, and Tony dragged himself to his and Loki’s stateroom, suddenly dead beat. “We met a girl puggy named Mitzi. She had it spelled out in rhinestones. On a pink collar.”

“Mitzi is a terrible name for a pug. It is a poodle name.” Loki, who held an irrational dislike of the entire breed, pronounced poodle like he was saying something distasteful, such as “filth” or “ordure” (Loki’s fancy-pants word, as Tony’d eventually learned, for shit). “The name of a mopsi ought to be either weighty, or whimsical.”

“Oh, Lok.” Tony shed his clothes down to his boxers, then was surprised to find that his husband, who usually slept in proper pj’s, was dressed in nothing but his smooth, white birthday suit. That was the first thing he noticed, the second being that Loki already had a small, but unmistakable, baby-bump showing.

“I only now noticed, this night, in the shower.”

“Wow. Do you think she’s going to be like Thor’s daughter?”

“ _Valkyja_? I know not. It is yet too soon to determine.”

Tony, who’d actually meant, “No, huge,” realized it might actually be best not to clarify, and instead ran his hand over the tiny rise, then kissed it, trying at the same time not to engage Loki’s tickle spot. His husband’s skin was so sensitive.

Loki was so sensitive. So loving. So caught up by life, having been finally given a chance to live, after so many hundreds of years.

“I’m starting to get excited, Lok. You know? I mean, everything I ever wanted is right here on board, everything I ever needed. We’re setting out on an adventure, and Bruce will join us in London, and we’ll head north, and it will be great! Really, I mean it. You know how I love new things? This will be really new, really different. I can’t wait.”

Loki let out a sigh, but it was a happy sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath a long time, but now could relax and breathe freely again. He didn’t say another word, only took Tony into his arms, as Tony took him.

They fell asleep that way, entwined.


	5. London Calling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A stretch limo, Florean Fortescue's ice cream, and fluff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> " _London Calling_ " is the title track to The Clash's third studio album, released in 1979.
> 
> "These are not the droids you are looking for" is a catchphrase from _Star Wars_ , spoken by Obi Wan Kenobi as he Jedi mind-tricks a collection of hapless stormtroopers.
> 
> I took a bit of license with the rules about bringing a dog into the U.K. There are a number of laws about rabies shots, deworming, microchipping, a pet passport, etc., and the dog must arrive in a sealed crate on a commercial airline (not even the StarkJet will do). I've made things slightly different, with the pet allowed to travel by sea as long as it hasn't gone off the ship between departure and arrival, because otherwise Mopsi and Loki would never forgive me. 
> 
> West Coast people such as myself, as I may have mentioned before this, stand IN lines. Those from New York and New Jersey stand ON them, while those in the South, I understand, WAIT in lines. Why these differences exist, I do not know.
> 
>  _The Once and Future King_ (1958), by T.H. White, is a retelling of Thomas Malory's _Le Morte d'Arthur_ which was completed between 1469 - 1470). Incidentally, the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical _Camelot_ was based on White's book, and Richard Harris, who played Arthur in the 1967 film version, also played Dumbledore in the film of _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_ (2001).
> 
> In the Charlie Chan mysteries, his frequent helper, and eldest of his fourteen (!) children was most often referred to as "Number One Son," rather than by his given name, which happened to be Lee.
> 
> The German Schleich company produces a hugely varied line of plastic toy figures that depict both natural and fantastical people and creatures, They're hand-painted in incredible detail, practically indestructible and sized to fit perfectly in a child's hand.
> 
> Matchbox cars, introduced by Lesney Products in 1953, were once two-to-three inch long die-cast metal vehicles sold in boxes similar to conventional matchboxes, hence their name. Now owned by Mattel, Inc. the cars come in several sizes, are made of plastic and have become virtually indistinguishable from Hot Wheels.
> 
> The Oxford college of Corpus Christi has one of the finest Classics programs and the best Classics library at the university.
> 
> " _I'm Henry VIII, I Am _"--although originally a British music hall song from all the way back in 1910--became a big hit for Herman's Hermits, a Manchester pop band, in 1965.__
> 
>  
> 
> __  
> _Frosty Paws is a brand of protein-based no-sugar ice cream for dogs._  
>   
> 
> __  
> _" _Hot for Teacher _" was a 1984 hit for the band Van Halen.___  
>   
> 
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> _The "rift" in Cardiff, a tear in time and space, caused many difficulties for the _Torchwood_ team, letting in any number of unexpected things._  
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> _The Icelandic word _fifl_ means "fool" or "idiot."_  
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> _Iðunn is the Norse goddess of youth, keeper of the golden apples._  
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> 

* * *

"I dunno," Tony said, tipping his husband a little bit of a wink, just to let Loki know he was joking. "The Royal Suite at _The Savoy_ , or a string of rooms over a bar with a shared bathroom at the end of the hall, in a place called _The Leaky Cauldron_ —how on Earth will I ever decide between the two?"

"One week in the former, three days in the latter, will scarcely prove harmful to your well-being, my delightful yet thoroughly spoilt husband--and there is to be no more future discussion of the matter." Loki informed him sternly. "You and the children will need to become acclimatized, and there is shopping to be done."

"And you?" Tony grinned. "Your majesty?"

Loki did look pretty damn majestic when he was laying down the law. And tall. Tony would have sworn his husband grew an additional three inches (or more) just to emphasize his point.

"I 'fit in,' as it is said, nowhere and everywhere." Loki's face held a strange look, and Tony decided that was it, no more teasing for real, not that day anyway. When Loki let a joke slide over his head without the slightest sign of a wickedly witty comeback, it meant his husband had been drained dry, and that was that.

 _The "really, Dad? Really?"_ look Hela aimed at him over the top edge of the road-map-sized book she'd been reading ever since they embarked from New York helped make that abundantly clear.

Huge mounds of paperwork always made Loki frantic. Left to his own devices, where bureaucracy was concerned, Tony's own personal god of mischief would much rather do a " _These are not the droids you're looking for_ " on all and sundry, then go on his merry way, but Tony had felt the need to speak up against that, in what now felt like a misguided attempt to set a good example. Honestly, though, what was the use of being a god if you weren't allowed to pull off an occasional Jedi mind-trick? Furthermore, who did he think he was fooling?Ed was too little to notice, Fen wasn't interested, Sleip and Jöri were pretty much incapable of being naughty under any circumstances, even with provocation, and Hela, whatever the situation, would do exactly what she pleased anyway.

So, thanks to Tony's well-meant meddling, they'd done nothing but jump through giant hoops made of red tape since the dawn of the day. Or the dawn of time. Or something.

"Baby," Tony said, with somewhat better-aimed good intentions. "You know, we're in a stretch limo? Luxury? Room to expand?"

But Grumpy Loki was grumpy--luxury vehicle or not--and, like their daughter, shot him a decidedly stormy glare. Southampton did not, currently, appear to be his favorite city. In fact, he wore something of the look of an exasperated deity planning an impromptu rain of toads, or something equally strange and random, as a delightful parting gift.

"Will we _never_ reach London?" Loki asked, with full-blown rhetorical drama, and Tony might have laughed (he was still tempted) if he hadn't known that Loki's hurt eye throbbed, that he was SO done with travel, and exhausted from fighting a full day of low-level-but-life-force-draining morning sickness that refused to confine itself to mornings, all the while juggling papers and standing on lines.

" _Pabbi_ , lie down upon the longest seat," Sleip said sweetly. "Rest a little in comfort as we journey toward the city."

"What our brilliant, caring kid said," Tony put in. "Seriously, I'll wake you up five minutes out from _The Savoy_. You and Thea can keep the kids occupied in the lobby while Number One Son and I check us all in, then I'll whisk you upstairs, ply you with whatever room service doesn't make you want to barf, and we'll spend a wonderfully relaxing evening enjoying the bliss of rooms that aren't continually in motion over a surging ocean."

"Speak not of surging oceans," Loki growled.

"Baby's a little fussy," Thea Ransome put in (probably meaning Edwin rather than Loki, though if the shoe fit...), "But I'll bet he'll drop right off if he's cuddled up to his _Pabbi_."

"For Edwin, then, of course," Loki agreed magnanimously.

Within seconds, _Pabbi_ and son were breathing deeply and peacefully, the toddler's head tucked under Loki's chin. Mopsi, never one to be left out, fitted himself neatly in the space behind Loki's bent knees and snored.

The truth be told, all three snored, softly, and at different pitches. It was, Tony considered, pretty much the cutest, and he might have taken a picture, or even a short video, except that he wanted to live.

"Will Sherlock come by to welcome us?" Sleip asked, saving his space by tucking a finger into the paperback he'd been reading-- _The Once and Future King_ \--before his spot of successful _Pabbi-_ wrangling.

Tony glanced around the limo. Here he sat, inventor of the StarkPad, the most powerful, versatile and portable mobile computer ever designed, and except for his own, there was nary a screen in sight. Sleipnir had his paperback, Jöri was playing himself at chess on his little magnetic chessboard. Hela had the aforementioned massive leather-covered tome (this time, _Hogwarts: a History_ —the gods only knew where she'd obtained it--and just like Hermione Granger in the books, she seemed bound and determined to "entertain" the entire family with a barrage of impromptu factoids).

Fen had laid out a slightly bizarro woodland scene, in large part courtesy of the Schleich Company, on the limo floor. There were trees, deer, wolves, bears, hedgehogs, foxes, a blue Matchbox car, two centaurs, and a truly impressive collection of cheap plastic spiders left over from the previous Halloween.

When the Matchbox car began to swoop in gentle arcs over the rest, the truth behind Fen's make-believe hit Tony hard and suddenly, smack in the face.

The Dark Forest. Fen was enacting the Dark Forest, a place that, to him, probably didn't seem scary at all--however forbidden it might be--but welcoming, a place of mystery and comforting shadows where he'd feel right at home.

Loki's words came back to him then, that thing he'd said about the boys not really being Animagi.

They couldn't be Animagi, because they weren't human. Hela, his Childlike Empress, really _was_ Death. Or, at least, _a_ Death. Fen wasn't a boy who turned into a wolf, he was a boy _and_ a wolf.

He was a wolf who sometimes became a boy.

Wasn't that what Loki had tried to tell him? How could he, Tony Stark, who not only loved their son, but also considered himself the most fluent translator ever of that complex, highly nuanced, and often-misunderstood foreign language, Lokiese, have so totally missed that one?

Wasn't that how _Fen's Book_ began, even? "At the edge of the Wild Wood lived a small wolf, who sometimes shed his skin."

How much more plainly could his husband have put it?

Inside Fen's head, their son, who was intelligent as any of the other kids, always lived on the edge of the Wild Wood. For all the damage von Doom had done to him with his death-ray, he wasn't a so much a boy with traumatic brain damage, or autism, or any other challenge--though some saw him that way--as a small wolf who sometimes shed his skin.

Fen used few words not because he possessed a limited vocabulary, but because his true native language was infinitely more rich—the entire world speaking to him in scents and sounds and colors Tony couldn't even begin to perceive.

Fen glanced up at him, his eyes wide, and the dark green of moss in the deep forest.

Tony smiled back, a little shaky still with that sudden revelation.

 _Wild Thing,_ Tony thought at him, deliberately accentuating the song's stupid, wonderful, bass-line in his head.

 _You make my heart sing_  
_You make everything... groovy_  
_Wild Thing..._

Fen giggled, hands pressed to his mouth.

The world snapped back onto its axis and turned smoothly again.

"That's also an awfully groovy Dark Forest," Tony told him. "The spiders are an epic touch. Nicely done, kiddo."

He caught Hela and Jöri watching him as well, and winked at them. Hela did like to boss her brothers, Fen had been known to prank her mercilessly (when he could get away with it), and Jöri never hesitated to put his sister in her place, but the three of them would protect each other until the bitter end. They had to. They'd been born, under the most unfavorable circumstances possible, each of them small enough to fit into the palm of Tony's hand, brilliant and magical and ready to defend the others against all obstacles.

Tony had loved them then, he loved them now. End of story.

He didn't need them to be human. He just needed for them to be _them_.

"But about Sherlock..." Sleipnir tried again. For reasons maybe only Loki understood, Sleip adored his older (though actually younger) brother. He'd follow Sherlock around like a puppy in love, with Sherlock—who was cold, rude, superior, and obnoxious with almost everyone he met, to an extent that even Tony considered impressive--barely seeming to condescend to acknowledge his presence.

Until he did. Once or twice Tony had heard them talking quietly, through the wall of another room, and found himself surprised, astonished, touched.

John Watson (who spoke Sherlockese as well, if not better, than Tony spoke Lokiese), coming in from an entirely different room, had looked at Tony and given his dry laugh. "Yeah. Just when you think you've heard everything."

Sleip, for not being human, remained in close contention with his honorary uncle, Kurt Wagner, for the title, in Tony's book, of "best person I've ever met." His fellow students at Corpus Christi (and admire, please, the irony of the son of a pagan god and an atheist attending a college called "Body of Christ") were going to adore him, quiet as he was. He exuded an aura of wisdom, goodness and decency only too rare in the busy and often cold-hearted world.

He'd lost his body, his voice, his family and his freedom for literal centuries, and this was how he came out of it—not unscarred (how could that kind of experience not have left scars?), but infinitely strong in all the right ways.

"You're kind of my hero, you know that, buddy?" Tony told Sleip.

His son smiled back at him, eyes bright and crinkled at the corners with joy. Gods, so much like his _Pabbi_.

The other three kids smiled up at him also, with equal warmth. Tony felt their excitement, and a shiver of excitement went through him, too. They were about to have an adventure money and power couldn't buy, and he had no idea what to expect.

The feeling, that sensation of hurtling forward in life with no one dragging on the brakes thrilled him, the way it always did, and Tony couldn't wait to see what followed.

* * *

"Admit it!" Loki said, laughing. "Admit it, beloved!"

"Okay, okay!" Tony answered. "I do not hate _The Leaky Cauldron_. Hell, Muggle that I am, I'm just thankful I can actually see the place."

"That would be my doing," Loki said, not quite failing to sound smug.

"Plus, Jesus, that bed!"

"La la la la," Jöri chimed in, sticking his index fingers ostentatiously into his ears.

"Not that, smartbutt." Tony gave his son a playful nudge. "I mean, it's bigger than my entire dorm room at MIT, and it has a _ladder_. A short ladder, but, still a ladder. I feel like a Tudor monarch. Do I actually mean a Tudor monarch?" he asked Loki.

"Your knowledge of Midgardian history remains impressive," his husband answered, not above a little teasing himself, now that the worst part of the morning sickness had passed.

"Seriously, like Henry VIII!"

That earned him a slow-clap from Loki, by which Tony understood that he'd not only guessed correctly when saying "Tudor monarch," but that Henry VIII ( _I am, I am_ ) had actually been one of them. Loki, however, completely aware of the guessing component in his statement, in no way intended to award full points to Gryffindor on that one.

It was kind of an agreement between them, Tony could be as ignorant about history as he wanted, while his husband held full license to mock him mercilessly about his lack of knowledge.

"I do have to confess, babe," Tony went on, "That I kind of geek-gasmed when you did that three up-two across tappy-tappy thing on the bricks and the wall slid. My gods, Diagon-frickin'-Alley! This place is amazing!"

For a few minutes they just sat on the most baroque-looking street bench Tony had ever encountered, enjoying their Florean Fortescue ice cream. The boys had chosen a flavor that changed color every few seconds. Hela's was jet-black, (yet somehow not licorice flavored—instead it tasted vaguely of lavender and vanilla bean, and the labeling card in front of its tub in the cold case simply read, "Loss and Regret").

Princess Loss and Regret, however, wasn't above making her brothers giggle by sticking out her black-stained tongue at them every time she thought he and Loki weren't looking.

Loki had ordered a dark-green ice cream that tasted like juniper, which should have been gross, but somehow wasn't. Tony's was pistachio. Because pistachio! It also was the best goddamn ice cream Tony had ever tasted.

Mopsi lay on one of his cushions (Loki had popped it out of a pocket universe to save the little dog's exalted tummy from touching the cobbles) beneath the part of the bench where Loki sat, polishing off a cup of the Wizarding World equivalent of Frosty Paws.

They couldn't have asked for a better day, brightly sunny, and warm but not too hot, the street and doorways filled with the colorfully-clothed people passing in and out of the shops. Most were clearly human, of the Wizarding variety.

Others, just as clearly... weren't.

Now and then, someone bowed slightly to Loki, murmuring, "Your highness"--which his husband acknowledged with a slight nod and, from time to time, the lifting of one elegant hand.

"So, when we get up north," Tony asked in an undertone, "Am I going to be Mister King Loki, or what?"

"Beloved," Loki answered in a level voice, possibly meaning, _Don't be ridiculous, you envious asshole,_ "You shall be Anthony Stark, Professor of Muggle Studies. I shall be Loki Hodrson Stark, Professor of Ancient Runes and Defense against the Dark Arts, and nothing more should be said."

He leaned over, so close his lips brushed Tony's ear, and a little shiver of anticipation and joy went down Tony's backbone. "Oh, how I do anticipate the sight of you in your robes, my handsome husband!"

A funny thing was, reading the "histories" (as Loki would say), Tony had always pictured robes as like... well, robes. As in academic robes, choir robes, graduation gowns. As something pleated and designed not to wrinkle, most likely made of fabrics unknown to nature and colored either dingy black or some other uninspiring hue. Possibly with hoods where no hoods should go.

Even the movies hadn't changed his mind that much—though Ron's horrible lace-cuffed formal robe had given him the giggles, mostly because it looked like even wizards got stuck with awful clothes in the seventies, and also because Tony was fairly sure he'd owned that same shirt, with its huge wing collar and ruffles, back in the day.

At this point, though, it had to be admitted, he found himself experiencing certain "hot for teacher" feelings when he imagined Loki in something tailored but swirly, gracefully draped over one of his husband's already devastatingly attractive black, three-piece suits, the whole ensemble accentuating Loki's height and his muscular slenderness.

After that image, it took a little effort for Tony to rein his thoughts back in.

They hadn't seen all that much of each other in the past week. Tony wound up some Stark Industries business at the London Corporate Office, then took a little overnight jaunt to the west to inspect the new factory in Wales.

"Be cautious of the rift in Cardiff," Loki had warned him. He wasn't having the best morning, and was lying noodle-like, face-down in bed, and looking more or less his favorite shade of green.

"Ha ha, good one," Tony answered, trying to knot his tie properly for the third time. "Listen to you with the pop culture references!"

"No, _fifl_ ," Loki snapped back (not a real snap, just a sick-Loki snap, though Tony felt pretty certain the _Aes_ word, " _fifl_ " wasn't a compliment). "The actual rift. Do not force me to come fetch you. Also, ask Hela to tie your tie, for I feel too unwell, and her fingers are adept. I will not send you out into the world looking as if no one cares for you."

"I care for you too, baby," Tony had said, kneeling down beside the bed, lifting his husband's heavy hair to plant a gentle kiss behind his ear. "I don't have to go if you feel too yucky. I'll be more than happy to stay here with you--if you promise to tappy-tappy me back in, that is."

"You know what this is," Loki answered, in a far less cranky tone. "You know that it is natural, will pass, and will cause me no harm. You know also that I wish you to resolve your business before we head north, that your mind may be at rest. Before dusk, Thor shall return from the Golden City, bearing a potion expressly brewed for me by Eir, Chief of Healers, and with it the receipt that more may be made, and then I shall feel perfectly well, as indeed I shall again upon future days."

If anything, at that point, Loki went even greener, a shade somewhere between "Hulk" and "Pea Soup."

"May all the gods speed your journey, _hjarta hrarta minn_. Now do leave me, please?"

Tony left. Some might say, "fled."

His poor baby.

It had to be said, though, Loki really had seemed to be feeling much better since then. Still draggier and more tired in the mornings than usual, and still not greatly in favor of certain foods, but also much more like his usual self, perfectly capable of meeting with a remarkable number of relations and friends, and even an entire day spent following his good buddy Rupert around the British Museum, happy as a kid in a candy store.

They'd squeezed in the theater, restaurants, even gone out dancing one evening after little Edwin was asleep, safe with a big brother who had no interest in nightlife. Tony found one thing odd, though—he'd always been a stay-out-all-'til-all-hours, party-'til-dawn kind of guy, now he found himself happy enough to return to _The Savoy_ well before midnight, to peek in at the kids while they slept, then cuddle with Loki on the couch, gazing out at the city lights.

He'd eaten the apple of Iðunn (or the Avalonian equivalent). He felt great. He wasn't slowing down or getting old.

But still...

Maybe he no longer felt himself searching for some distant, unattainable thing, much less sensation for sensation's sake. Not when all he wanted could be found wherever he found his family.

 _Yup, I am thoroughly domesticated_ , he thought—but the thought made him happy.

He felt like the fox in _The Little Prince_ , finding out "tamed" was really a code word for being cared about, being loved.

Which he was. Always, now, he was.

So, here they were, four gods and a Muggle, temporary lodgers at _The Leaky Cauldron_ , eating magical (or, at least, super-tasty) ice cream outdoors in Diagon Alley, heart of the Wizarding World, enjoying their Loki-declared free day before the serious shopping commenced.

The plan went, the five of them would play tourist here while Sleip spent the day with Sherlock, and Thea had tea with Martha Hudson and Mary Watson, and stocked up on baby things for Ed.

Tonight they'd be joined by Bruce. The next two days they'd be power shoppers and bang through everyone's school lists, and the day after that...

King's Cross Station, Platform 9 ¾, and on to the North.

Wands for the kids and Loki had been penciled in on today's to-do list, because they'd need to be fine-tuned, his husband said, before the children took them to school.

"What does that mean?" Tony whispered into Hela's ear.

"Powered down so that no one gets horribly killed," she returned, matter-of-factly, glancing up from her waffle cone of Loss and Regret.

"Don't worry, Dad," his daughter added, with a more-than-slightly wicked grin. " _Pabbi_ does know what he's doing."

"No doubt," Tony muttered in return, as his husband magicked them all unsticky. "Not a doubt in my mind."

"Liar, liar, robes on fire," Hela teased.


	6. The Four of Wands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and the kids seek their new wands at Ollivander's. It's not an entirely comfortable meeting, and Hela, in particular, remains resistant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the Tarot, the meaning of the four of wands, upright, includes celebration, harmony, marriage, home, community. Reversed, it can mean a transition or a breakdown in communication. Both meanings seem appropriate here.
> 
> "zilch"=nothing  
> No one appears to know exactly where the work comes from originally, but it first appeared in print in 1931, in an American humor magazine called _Ballyhoo_ , where it was used as a "placeholder" last name, like the "Doe" in John or Jane Doe. 
> 
> "Dust Buster" is the brand name of a compact hand-held vacuum cleaner.
> 
> "Space Opera" is a subgroup of the science fiction genre that features daring adventures, space battles, and not-always-entirely-realistic romance. If you're thinking _Star Wars_ at this point, your should be. Writers such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein wrote literally dozens of such novels during their heydays, many of which contained thinly-veiled commentary on Cold War politics as well as often... er... less-than-multifaceted depictions of female characters. 
> 
> A _nom de guerre_ is an alias used in time of combat--literally "name of war."
> 
> Originally a disparaging term for boldness or audacity (in the sense of have crossed over the boundaries of acceptable behavior), the Yiddish word, _chutzpah_ (from the Hebrew _ḥutspâ_ ) has come to have both positive and negative connotations, something like "having guts" or "having balls."
> 
> A bath chair—or "Bath chair" (invented by James Heath and named after the English resort town where he lived)—was a light rolling carriage mounted on three or four wheels. Bath chairs were designed for use by a single invalid, had folding shades that could be lowered or raised as needed and, sometimes, a steering device. They were generally either pushed or pulled by an attendant, but could be adjusted to be pulled by an animal.
> 
> In the 1968 movie _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_ the Child-Catcher (played with sublime grace and creepiness by ballet dancer Robert Helpmann) is a henchman of Baron and Baroness Bomburst employed to snatch and lock up children found on the streets of Vulgaria.
> 
> "I’ll eat you up I love you so" is a paraphrasing of the words said by the Wild Things to Max in _Where the Wild Things Are_ by Maurice Sendak.
> 
> Jöri is referencing both the witch's candy house from Hansel and Gretel, and the witch's request that Gretel check to see if her oven is hot (the better to cook you, my dear).
> 
> "Depends" is a brand name for adult diapers.

* * *

"So, this is it, huh?" Tony asked. The place looked both totally unexciting and exactly as described, from the dusty purple cushion holding a dusty single wand behind the multiple panes of the equally dusty (and heavily fingerprint-marked) display window, to the peeling gold letters spelling out the proprietor's name.

“ _Ollivanders_ ,” those letters read. Of course they did. Complete with the wand-and-swirly-“O”-logo.

"Just so," Loki answered, in his cryptic voice, accompanied by an even more cryptic facial expression (eye-patch accentuated again, it appeared more-than-slightly sinister), right before he pushed open the door.

When his husband got like that, all godlike and mysterious, letting nothing out or in, Tony never knew what to expect. He could tell Loki wasn’t exactly at his happiest, just being near this place, but after that…? Zilch.

He slipped his hand into Loki's, giving a little squeeze, but again didn’t get a reaction.

Inside the shop, dust swam through the air like glitter in a snow globe. Hela gave a dainty sneeze before running a white-gloved fingertip along the edge of the windowsill, all the while exuding a definite, if unspoken, aura of pure, undiluted snark.

“Hela, dearest,” Loki chided gently.

“So no one’s yet invented the Dust Buster, magical version?” Tony quipped.

Loki didn’t dignify the question with an answer.

Ollivander’s shop appeared to be about the size of their coat closet back in the penthouse, if the coat closet had possessed a shit-ton of dark wood and at least two walls of floor-to-ceiling wand boxes. And also dust-bunnies the size of Central Park squirrels. At least, Tony assumed the squared-ended boxes contained wands. They actually reminded him of the long 2x2 boxes that Camp Fire Girl Mints came in when he was a kid.

Did Camp Fire Girl Mints even exist anymore?

His parent's cook, the aptly-named Mrs. Cook, had used exactly such a box to store her knitting needles. She’d kept the mints themselves in the freezer, where they froze hard enough to break a tooth on--but damn, back in the day, were those things tasty, like eating a sweet, concentrated snowstorm wrapped in dark chocolate.

"Interesting," Loki said, with—finally—a slight grin, a note of tenderness coming into his voice, a common reaction when he’d caught a flicker of Tony’s childhood memories. He seemed shake himself out of his state of preternatural funk, that maybe wasn’t a funk at all, or even Loki truly being mysterious. Maybe he was only concentrating, with maximum fierceness, on his not-exactly-comfortable surroundings.

“The smallness of the shop is a ruse,” he commented. “As is the dust--common, unremarkable things used to provoke a reaction, which the wand-maker then studies to better judge the wand-seeker.”

“Or he needs to hire a new janitor,” Tony said. Because, seriously…

“Has he been studying us, _Pabbi_?” Jöri asked.

"I don't need a wand," Hela protested, after sneezing a second time. Only Hela would sneeze, violently and realistically, merely to emphasize a point. She and Loki traded looks, the two of them thick as thieves—their daughter still appearing about a thousand miles south of pleased.

Tony remembered, in his teens, once reading the phrase “high dudgeon” in some Old School science fiction book, probably a Heinlein or an Asimov, a space opera full of guns and adventure (as well as the misogyny and Cold War paranoia so prevalent at the time they scarcely even seemed remarkable). Hela, at that moment, appeared to be demonstrating that particular state to perfection.

"If you don't have a wand," Jöri told his sister (he used his reasonable voice, nearly always a mistake where Hela was concerned), "The other kids will think you're weird. Or showing off."

His words carried a certain hint of weariness, as if he'd reminded Hela of the exact same thing, or similar, about a million times before, always with the most limited possible success. “ _Pabbi_ , Dad, please tell her she at least needs to try to fit in this time?"

“Why?” Hela demanded. “Why must I? Why should I? I am myself, and only myself. Why should I have to be like everyone else?

"Dearest, I shall also be learning wand-work," Loki informed her. "It may yet prove to be a valuable skill and--as it is a different sort of control than you are accustomed to exercising--can only improve your strength and focus in other areas. It will behoove you to learn its techniques, as I and your brothers do, not for the sake of conformity, but as a form of self-discipline, and in the pursuit of knowledge.

"There was a time, once," Loki continued, in a quiet, tense voice, "That I found myself caught unprepared by a sorcerer whose Craft I believed inferior to my own, and even wholly defeated he managed to bring me to harm. Surely you remember?”

If Hela didn’t remember, Tony certainly did. That sorcerer—necromancer, really—a Hydra flunky and asshole of the first order, who went by the _nom de guerre_ of Nels Lars Nelson, had pretended to be Loki's colleague and friend, using that closeness to cause Tony's husband almost soul-destroying harm.

Nelson not only came near to bringing about Clint's death in a truly horrible way (there had been spiders, many, many spiders), but even dying himself (or so it seemed), had managed to suck Bruce and Loki (as well as Baby Ed, still _in utero_ ) through a portal into another world. A bad world. A dangerous world.

For six months, Tony had grieved for his brother-in-all-but-blood and his wonderful, irreplaceable husband, fearing he’d lost both of them for good. Even thinking back to those awful days put a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and made a panicked tightness grip his throat.

Loki brought him back to both himself and the here-and-now by raising Tony’s hand to his mouth, kissing the knuckles gently, his thoughts curling with infinite tenderness through Tony’s mind, _Those months lie far behind us, beloved. Fear not, for never again shall I leave you, my heart._

Tony pulled in a big, shuddering breath. “Yeah,” he managed to gasp. “Yeah. Okay.”

The kids gazed at him worriedly, but also sympathetically—at least, the boys did. Hela had her own issues.

“Also,” Loki continued, in the kindest possible tone, “We must all remind ourselves that we are not above others, not better, only different, and that it is good, now and then, to embrace humility.”

With that, Loki shivered lightly, and Tony gave his hand a return squeeze. His husband still had nightmares about how SHIELD had tried, once upon a time, to teach him humility. Or humiliate him. One of the two.

Poor Loki’s years on Midgard had not been entirely without incident.

“Oh, and here is Mister Ollivander!” Loki suddenly exclaimed. “Dear sir, I greet you!”

That was it, Tony decided. No more wimpy “hello” or “hi” from him in the future. From here on out, he fully intended to acknowledge the presence of every single person he met with, “Dear sir (or madam, as the case might be), I greet you!’ and nothing else.

Except that, sadly, he suspected he lacked Loki’s flair. Maybe he could start out by practicing on Bruce, then work his way up to others? It was probably all a matter of confidence—what The Cowardly Lion of Oz would have called “the noive,” and his paternal grandfather, the never-acknowledged-by-Howard, Gideon Sol Adeer, Lower East Side fishmonger, might have termed ” _chutzpah_.”

“You mock me?” Loki asked, _sotto voce_.

“Never,” Tony answered, “You’re adorable.”

Which Loki was, even when acting mysterious, and imperious, and frankly, on the whole, a little weird.

Or maybe he was just a person with potion-resistant baby-related nausea who didn’t particularly want to argue with his highly-stubborn daughter in a place that gave him the creeps—because that, Tony realized, was actually the vibe coming through to him along the Lokiline.

His husband didn’t like Ollivander’s. It made his teeth feel tingly and sent prickles up his spine. He wanted out of the place, right there and then.

But instead Loki just stood in place, looking kingly and slightly bored, as his mouth went dry and the hair stood up on the back of his neck.

Tony found himself jolted out of these not-very-productive thoughts when an old man sporting crazy cotton-fluff hair, eye-bags that were more like suitcases, and eyes themselves that seemed all at once both sharp and bleary, rolled out of a curtained back room.

Rolled, because he sat in a kind of high-backed Victorian wheelchair—a “bath chair” Tony felt fairly certain such contraptions had been called, way back when, for reasons entirely unknown to him--with big, squeaky metal wheels.

The noise set Tony’s own teeth on edge. For that matter, so did the guy himself. It wasn’t just that he seemed powerful in his own way, a way entirely different from Loki’s, or perceptive (which he totally did). It wasn’t even that he gave Tony a look like he was one of his late grandpa’s fish, maybe one that had sat out in the sun for a few hours—like he was stinking up the guy’s shop with his Muggleosity.

More than that, he didn’t like the way those sharp/bleary eyes locked on Loki, filling with a hunger that quickly seemed to spill over the top into some strange species of greed.

“Your Highness!" the old man exclaimed, in deep, mellow, yet slightly hoarse voice.

“Mister Ollivander,” Loki replied, with a restrained kind of not-quite-warmth that told Tony two things: one, that Loki honestly respected the knowledge and skill of the man’s craft; two, that he trusted the dude somewhat less far than he could throw him, considering that Loki, strong as he was, probably could have tossed a withered old guy like Ollivander a hell of a long distance.

“And your remarkable children,” the wand-maker added, in a way Tony could only describe as seriously off-putting, like he was throwing his whole heart into auditioning for the part of the Child-Catcher from _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_ —major nightmare fodder from Tony’s kid-days. It was an “ _I’ll eat you up I love you so_ ” kind of voice, and it gave him the serious willies.

 _Come into my delightful candy house_ , Jöri remarked in his head. _Oh, but first, would you please check the oven?_

 _You got it, buddy,_ Tony replied. _Creeptastic, huh?_

Pabbi _trusts this man?_ Jör sounded uncertain, maybe edging toward nervous.

 _Not at all_ , Tony sent back, _But he trusts him to know his trade, and to be smart enough not to mess with any of you, if he knows what’s good for him._

“…your so-delightful children.” Ollivander was saying. “I scarcely need to measure you, my dear young lady.” He chucked Hela under the chin.

For a second she looked like she might bite Ollivander's long, skinny, knobbly, and chin-chucking fingers--and only, just barely, thought better of it. Tony’s Childlike Empress had never been known to suffer fools, cheek-pinchers, or chin-chuckers, lightly.

The same went for _anyone_ who dared to lay hands on her exalted small person. She stood upon all four-and-a-half feet of her dignity, and nobody better forget it, least of all some mortal Midgardian wandmaker.

Tony understood that perfectly. He didn’t like being touched by strangers either, especially strangers he didn’t much care for.

When Loki murmured a couple words in _Aes_ that Tony didn’t quite catch, their daughter subsided. A bit.

She still looked seriously miffed, more or less like she was trying to decide which of her Sister-Deaths ought most appropriately to be summoned (the Death of Skilled Craftspersons, maybe?), the better to hurry Mister O on his way to the great wand-factory in the sky--though she thawed slightly the minute a black box drifted off the highest shelf, straight into her little gloved hands.

“Something special, so special for the little lady: wing-bone of thestral with a core of raven’s pinion, nothing but the finest and the most unique for a princess of Asgard.”

“Thank you, esteemed sir!” Loki said, in a clipped and extremely British way, as he whisked the black box out of Hela’s hands and straight into his pocket universe.

Much as they loved her, and responsible as she tended to be in her jobs (both of them), their daughter had too much magic in her, too much confidence (and, as Loki explained, was still too young) for her to always be entirely trusted with magical things—not until her _Pabbi_ gave them a good tweaking.

Loki turned his face up toward the wall of boxes, gazing at them with what, in any other guy, might be mistaken for mild, polite interest—the kind of expression a different person might take on looking at a co-worker’s vacation pictures. Tony knew his husband too well by now to be in any way fooled.

He watched those big green irises scintillate, alive with tiny sparks of emerald and gold in the moment before two more boxes floated down from the top shelf.

“Ancient oak with a core of sinew of direwolf for our Fen,” Loki murmured, “And for Jöri, ironwood filled with a dragon’s heartstring. Most appropriate. My sincerest thanks, Mr. Ollivander. It shall be remembered that you served our family well.”

Both wand-boxes promptly followed Hela's into the Lokiverse.

The old man, far from looking creepy now, appeared more than slightly scared, and Tony didn’t blame him. Mild look and quiet voice aside, it wasn’t often these days that Loki fully got his god on, but when he did…

He looked taller, and even more ancient—in his ageless way—than he had a few moments previously. A dark-light something glimmered all around him, making him appear, in short, terrifying.

Loki waved a lazy hand and a fourth box appeared, floating all on its own from the back room behind the curtain, not a box of paper this time, but a narrow box of dark wood bound with some dull metal, long as Loki's arm, a single jewel like a winking dragon eye on the lid. Loki smiled—not his usual smile, either, but one that looked fierce, almost predatory.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it pleases me greatly. I shall remember, dear sir. I shall remember.”

“Always, your majesty,” Ollivander quavered, looking like he might soon need a change of wizard Depends. “Truly, always, I seek only to serve.”

“Excellent,” Loki replied, opened a hole in the air, and vanished into it.

“Ooo-kay,” Tony said. “Uh. Cool. Thanks. Much obliged.”

With that, weirded out beyond his power to explain, he ushered his children the hell out of there, back into a street (or alley, as the case might be) that automatically felt 100% cleaner, brighter, and more normal than where they’d just been.

Tony found himself more or less staggering to the bench they’d recently occupied. Even Mopsi, dragging the elaborately-tooled leather leash he didn't really need, collapsed underneath in the shade with a groan, as if he’d just suffered through a trying ordeal. He didn't even bark for his special pillow.

A few seconds later Jöri appeared—in a major lapse of parenting, Tony hadn’t even noticed he’d been missing—carrying a chocolate bar the size of his face. He broke off a large piece for each of them, and they more or less huddled together for the next few minutes, nibbling in silence.

“That was strange,” Tony said. “Was that strange?”

Fen and Jöri nodded mutely. Hela just dropped down beside him on the bench in a big fluff of petticoats and attitude.

“ _Pabbi_ might at least have let me _see_ my wand before he took it,” she griped.

“Okay, Empress, so now you _want_ a wand?” Tony teased. “See, I’m kinda having a hard time keeping up.”

“You’re not funny,” Hela told him. "You think you are, but you most certainly are _not_." Still, she smiled, just a little, a tiny flash of brightness back behind the black curtain of her hair. “I know, I know. I must trust _Pabbi_ with magical things, and not be impatient. He knows best.”

“Hear, hear,” Jöri muttered.

“By the way,” his sister continued, “ _Pabbi_ tells us not to be concerned, that he’ll be home for supper. He’s only gone to a safe place, where he can tune our wands properly. Somewhere in London, but I can’t feel where precisely. It’s awfully well… muffled? Is that the word I mean?”

“It’s underneath Uncle Rupert’s museum,” Jör put in. “I can feel it.”

“Me too,” Fen said, crawling up onto Tony’s knees, leaning back against his chest. Tony wrapped one arm around him, draping the other arm around Hela’s shoulders, giving her a little squeeze.

Was it true that the boys could feel where their _Pabbi_ had gone to, or were they only teasing their sister? he wondered. The question bore consideration. Why would Loki conceal his location from his partner-in-crime Hela?

Whatever the answer to that question, his Childlike Empress didn’t seem to be brooding on it. Instead, she told Tony, “Daddy, I think I want a cat.”

“Apropos of…?”

Sometimes his family’s rapid changes of topic tended to make Tony’s head spin.

“Our Hogwarts letters. They said we could bring a cat, an owl, or a toad. I want a cat. A beautiful black cat, like the kind the Eqyptians worshiped, sleek and elegant."

Under the bench, Mopsi gave a quiet moan, sounding remarkably despairing.

“I want an owl,” Jöri put in, “So I can send messages to Sleip at Oxford, and he can send messages back to me. Because I’ll miss him.” He took a seat on Tony’s other side, leaning against his shoulder—gods above, that kid was growing! In minutes, probably, he’d be towering over Tony himself. "Or else, possibly, a snake, since I suppose I can't have a dragon. May I have both an owl _and_ a snake?"

“It just hit me," his son continued, after a minute or two of pleasant contemplation. "I guess for the first time, that Sleip, and the rest of us, will be in whole different countries, and not together. Partly I’m madly excited, partly…” His slender shoulders lifted. “I don’t know exactly how to feel.”

“Scary?” Fen suggested, snuggling deeper into Tony’s shirt.

“Me too,” Tony told them. “What if the kids don’t like me? What if they think I’m weird? What if I’m way, way too Muggle-y for their taste?”

Hela got up on her knees to give Tony’s cheek a kiss. “You’re a Muggle, Dad, but you’re a _brilliant_ Muggle. They’ll adore you. Besides, you’ll have _Pabbi_ , and we’ll all be near if you need us. We’re all extremely clever with subtly annoying curses and they’ll rue the day they crossed us.”

Tony laughed. “Not sure if that makes me feel worse or better there, Empress.”

"I’m sorry, Daddy, if I was shirty earlier," Hela told him, sounding close to sincere. "I must admit, I’m a little nervous too.”

 _Shirty?_ Tony wondered.

Jöri laughed softly. “We’ve all been studying British idiom.”

No doubt at all, he was Loki’s son. “ _British idiom_ ,” at age eleven.

Inwardly, Tony shook his head.

He wanted so badly for the kids to be happy here, for this adventure to be all they wanted and expected, for it all to be, well… _magical_ for his magical children.

“I think it will be, Dad,” Hela said. “I think it will, don’t you?”


	7. Wand Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wand tinkering accomplished, Loki returns to _The Leaky Cauldron_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The cat that caught the canary"=the look one gets after mischief is thoroughly managed, in other words, looking smug, especially after doing something so difficult most people couldn't accomplish it, or else something naughty. Another version is "the cat that got the cream." Oddly enough, the first printed reference related to the saying appears to have been in 1891, in the form of a unfunny joke that appeared in the "Humor" section of newspapers in several English-speaking countries:
> 
> Father: That cat made an awful noise in the back garden last night.  
> Son: Yes, sir. I guess that since he ate the canary, he thinks he can sing.
> 
> A Panini is a grilled sandwich made with something other than sliced bread. The grilling is often done in a press that closes over the sandwich in order to toast both sides at once.
> 
> Bluegrass (the name refers to a type of grass common in Kentucky) is a genre of American roots music that developed out of the Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and English traditional music that settlers, many of whom settled in or around the Appalachian Mountains, brought to the U.S. from their homelands.
> 
> In ancient Mesopotamian religion, a Lamassu is a a protective being with the head of a man and the body of either a lion or a bull and, often, wings. The one Loki refers to is a huge gypsum statue that now appears in Room 6 of the British museum, though it, and a second Lamassu formerly guarded the entrance to King Ashurnasirpal II's (883-859 B.C.E.) royal palace at Nimrud, in what's now Iraq. Since the statue was mean to be seen either straight on or from the side, not from an angle, the statue was carved with five legs, so that it appears to have the right number from either direction. The human head has both an impressive beard and a jaunty conical hat.
> 
> "Bog Man"="Lindow Man" (his official name is actually "Lindow II"--"Lindow I" is only a skull) is the upper body and right leg of a man in his mid-20's who was found in a peat bog in Cheshire, in England. He dates back to sometime between 2 B.C.E. and 119 C.E., and because of the chemical composition of the bog is amazing well-preserved, to the point that his hair, skin, a fox-fur arm-band around his left arm, and a length of sinew knotted around his neck can still be seen. Like the Sutton Hoo treasures, he's displayed now in Room 41 of the British Museum.
> 
> Sutton Hoo, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England is the location where the remains of a 6th or early 7th century Anglo Saxon ship-burial were found. The artifacts from the burial include several dress ornaments made of gold and red gems; a ceremonial helmet, shield and sword; a musical instrument identified as a lyre; and a number of pieces of silver plate that came all the way from Byzantium.
> 
> Loki clearly prefers A.A. Milne's original of _Winnie-the-Pooh_ (circa 1926), as illustrated by E.H. Shepard (known in the U.S. as "Classic Pooh"), to Disney's version.
> 
> Dr. Denton's, aka "footie pajamas" or "blanket sleepers," are made of thick, warm material, zip up the front and cover the feet entirely. They've been keeping children warm at night since 1865, when they were created either by Whitley Denton or Frank "Doc" Denton (stories differ).
> 
> " _Baby I Love Your Way_ " was a 1975 hit for Peter Frampton, in the genre that's now referred to as "Classic Rock." Imagine with me, if you will, Loki snickering as Tony sings to him the soul-stirring words, " _Ooh baby I love your way, everyday/Wanna tell you I love your way, everyday/Wanna be with you night and day..._ "
> 
> The audio processor Auto-Tune was created by Antares Audio Technologies to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances, making them appear on-key, even when they weren't originally. The original model was introduced in 1997.
> 
> Giant sequoias ( _Sequoiadendron giganteum_ ), which grow naturally only in the state of California, are both the world's largest single trees and largest living things (by volume). An average specimen reaches a height of 164–279 feet (50-85 meters) and is 20–26 feet (6-8 meters) in circumference, though they've been known to grow as tall as 311 feet high and 27 feet around. By contrast, Europe's tallest tree, a mountain ash, measures about 211 feet in height.

* * *

“Well, if it isn’t the cat that caught the canary,” Tony commented, a few seconds after his husband flickered gently into view atop _The Leaky Cauldron's_ vast Henry VIII bed.

Loki, far more accustomed by that time to what he referred to (still a little snippily) as "Midgardian Idiom," did not respond with an indignant, "I know not your cats and canaries, husband!" as he might well have done, even just a couple years in the past. Instead, Tony received a mini-eyeroll (special Loki version, intensity medium-sarcastic), accompanied by the flicker of a smile.

The bedsprings gave a faintly bluegrassish twang as Loki’s weight settled into the mattress, then fell silent.

Loki looked a little tired, maybe, but still maintained the radiantly-pale glow he had when he was healthy. Beyond that, he appeared even more perfectly pleased with himself than usual.

“I _Apparated_ ,” he informed Tony. “It is indeed the oddest feeling--rather like wearing a too-tight pair of boots over one’s entire body, or perhaps becoming a Panini as it is introduced to the Panini press."

Tony laughed, and shifted newly-bathed and sweet-smelling Edwin to his hip—gods, their "little one" was getting heavy these days! Their baby, born in another world, so far away from him, and now growing up so fast.

“I would quite enjoy a Panini right now," Loki said, a little wistfully. "Rupert generously fed me tea—a substantial tea, at that--but I am starving!”

“Protein bars in the drawer of the nightstand,” Tony informed him. “So, you’ve been hanging with Rupert?”

Rupert, as in Rupert Giles, Loki’s old Oxford buddy, former Watcher and current "curator" (a code word, Tony suspected, for Rupert's _actual_ job, which wasn't to be mentioned in front of mundanes, himself included) at the British Museum.

In retrospect, now that Tony thought about it, maybe the whole “Hogwarts is real” thing shouldn’t have come as such a complete shock to him. He'd met the supposedly-fictional Rupert years past, back before he and Loki got married.

“I find my usual mode of travel far superior,” Loki said, his voice slightly muffled as he dived for a handful of the wrapped bars, shoving a whole one into his mouth before he even bothered to roll over and sit up again.

“Did you know…?” he added, a little indistinctly, clearly pretending not to be talking with his mouth full, “The British Museum maintains a special chamber especially for the deactivation of dangerous magical artifacts? Rupert, who uses the room often in his work, kindly lent it to me for the afternoon."

“Why am I not even surprised?" Tony answered, with another grin. He'd _known_ Rupert--a tall and extremely proper British guy who nonetheless gave the distinct impression of being able to remove your lungs through your nostrils without even raising his own pulse--wasn't _just_ a curator. He wondered how much weird magical stuff that needed to be neutralized the museum had actually collected over the years.

Loki looked thoughtful for a total of three seconds. "The Lamassu statue of ancient Nimud, naturally. Certain elements of the Sutton Hoo treasure. Oh, and the Lindow bog-man, of course."

"Among others," his husband added helpfully.

Edwin clapped his chubby little hands. "Lamassu!" he exclaimed, though it came out more like "A Maffoo!"

"Of course," Tony echoed, then, "Say what?"

"A statue of a winged deity with the head of a man and the body of a lion, various relics of an Anglo-Saxon ship-burial--namely, the shield, helm and sword of a king--and a peat-bog mummy found near Cheshire," Loki answered. "Since you _did_ ask, though unspokenly, what 'weird magical stuff' the British Museum contained."

"'Cheshire,' as in the smiling cat?" Tony asked.

Even Edwin rolled his eyes at that one.

"Indeed," Loki answered, his voice bone-dry, though a second later he burst into his sunniest smile. "I aided personally in the sword's disenchantment--quite an interesting process, as it _would_ try to behead people, the contrary old thing."

"Well, of course you did, Lok!" Tony found himself smiling back, unable to resist. “And of course your mode of transportation is way better--no mockery here," he was careful to add. "You're not just a wizard, babe, you're a god, after all.”

Loki grinned back, clearly pleased by the compliment, his eyes shining green, full of mischief and humor when (again, just a handful of years before), thanks to SHIELD and others, hearing those words would have pushed him over the edge, metaphorically speaking.

"The children's wands," Loki added, almost as an afterthought, "As I am certain you will want to know, are now fully attuned and will serve them beautifully, causing harm neither to themselves nor to their classmates. Truly, Ollivander's work is to be commended. My own wand is a marvel.”

"Well, yays for that," Tony answered, relieved. His kids, wonderful as they were to his thinking, and no matter how much he valued their talent, curiosity and enthusiasm, were probably also better off without pointy, pointy sticks of death close at hand. 

He studied Loki's face, captivated by his husband's expression of radiant shining enthusiasm. Clearly an afternoon making magic with Rupert was Loki's version of his own ScienceBro time with Bruce, at that point, even a stranger would have recognized how completely jazzed Loki felt about all this, how much he loved heading out on this new adventure, how much he looked forward to the year ahead.

Loki did a great job, most times, living in the Muggle world—he made a kickass Avenger, an amazing _Pabbi_ to their kids, and he truly rocked every one of his non-magical pursuits, from his Linguistics classes at NYU to volunteering at his "Club of Boys and Girls." Tony sometimes tended to forget though, in the midst of all that ordinary everydayness: A) how young his husband actually was, relatively speaking, and therefore how capable of boundless youthful enthusiasm he tended to be; B) that magic really was Loki's calling--not just a passion, as science was for Tony, but literally his essence, his life’s blood, his soul.

Lost in these thoughts, Tony jerked suddenly when, from nowhere, Loki whipped out a stick slightly shorter than his forearm, pointed the stick in his direction and sang out, “ _Accio,_ Edwin!”

The toddler flew, trailing his bath-towel and squealing with delight, to his _Pabbi’s_ waiting arms, the stick having vanished as instantly as it had appeared.

“Way to give me a heart attack!” Tony protested, but Loki’s good humor couldn’t help but be contagious. He bounced up onto the giant bed beside his husband, kissing him thoroughly before stretching out in perfect comfort on the enormous, cushy mattress.

Loki, after magicking Edwin into a pair of Classic Pooh Dr. Denton's with a lazy wave of one hand, lay down to face him, the toddler cuddled up between them. He reached behind their son's back to take Tony’s hand.

“Again, I must thank you for this, best of husbands.” The sincerity of that statement shone in Loki’s eyes, inspiring a stirring or two of guilt in Tony’s conscience.

“We should do more things you want, Lok," he said. "Remind me of that, when I forget, okay?”

“Indeed, I am, in general, most content with our life together. However…” The glint of mischief returned.

_I solemnly swear that I am up to no good._

“You were right, babe. It’s important to shake things up, now and then. Good for us, good for the kids, good for poor old Bruce, who really did need to be dragged away from NYC for a spell—pun fully intended--you were 100% right about that.”

Loki laughed. He always laughed at Tony’s terrible jokes, even the ones that made Hela and Jöri (who'd once been known to laugh at his jokes too) groan and treat him to Loki eye-rolls, junior version.

“Hey, speaking of spells, babe, can I look at your wand? It won’t make my fingers drop off if I touch it, or anything, will it?”

Loki’s eyes searched his for a moment before the stick reappeared. More than a minute, actually—by which Tony understood that, yes, his fingers _might_ actually drop off if he touched the thing, but since his husband would be disinclined to allow that to happen, Loki fully intended to thoroughly ward, or guard, or whatever magical beings like his husband called that kind of protection, the living hell out of the wand first.

“It is only that…” Loki began, almost apologetically, “Only that I am… as I am. The children’s wands will be safe for your touch.”

“Damn, Lok. That's in no way a comforting statement.”

“Be not afraid,” replied Loki (King James Version) earnestly, and Tony read in those words, so clearly it almost hurt, the scars of his husband’s Asgardian upbringing, when he had felt so intensely different from everyone else, and also so heart-breakingly alone.

Tony fucking hated to see that look—which, thank all the gods, at least seemed to appear less and less frequently the more time went by—and tried to banish it with his own completely ridiculous brand of Loki-specific magic—namely, an off-key chorus of “ _Baby, I Love Your Way_.”

Loki simultaneously smiled fondly and looked pained, commenting, “Sadly, your tunefulness improves little, dearest husband, despite all my meddling.”

“Ha! Suspicions confirmed! I knew you'd Auto-Tuned me!" He'd meant the words humorously, but Loki gazed at him for another long moment, his emerald eyes just a little too bright.

Not in a bad way, it turned out.

“Do you know, _hjarta hjarta minn_ , how you have healed me through these years?” Loki told him, after the moment passed, his eyes softening, his tone gentle. With his thumb, he traced the outlines of Tony’s beard, so tenderly, so lovingly...

All Tony could answer afterward (hoarsely), was, “Ditto, my Loki.”

“Sad?” Edwin piped up, tugging on Tony's pants-leg.

“No, baby,” Tony answered. “Happy. Really happy. Both of us.”

“Not a baby!” their son--who, despite being both the human embodiment of the most brilliant A.I. ever created and... not--as well as, undisputedly, the son of a god--was still totally their sweet baby, protested, "I'm a big boy!”

Indeed you are, my love,” Loki answered, laughing, snuggling Edwin close as he handed over his wand for Tony’s inspection.

Tony turned the thing carefully, feeling a slight hum in his fingertips, but not much else. At first glance, the wand looked very…. well… sticky.

That reminded Tony of one of Jöri's second-grader jokes, back when his currently-almost-as-tall-as-he-was son had been a barely-chest-high lad of seven.

"Dad, what's brown and sticky?" Jör had asked him.

"Uh... I don't know, buddy. What _is_ brown and sticky?"

"A stick, Daddy!"

Cue peals of laughter.

Loki's wand resembled nothing more or less than the end of a not-too-big branch cut off at an angle from a large and extremely old tree. How he knew it was old—no, not merely old, ancient, in a way that made the sequoias seem like second-growth junk timber--Tony couldn’t have said. He just _knew_.

“Babe, what kind of wood is this?” he asked, turning the wand again, because, honestly, that wood (whatever kind of wood it was) felt more like metal than something that had ever been alive, dark, hard, and heavy in his hands.

“Ash-wood,” Loki answered softly, and in that instant Tony knew exactly what tree that particular branch had come from, and why his husband had needed to shield him from its effects.

That tree, Yggdrasil, the World Tree, he realized, was a thing. A _real_ thing, just as magic as magic could be.

Take that, Jane Foster Friggason with your Einstein-Rosen Bridges and your “ _it’s merely advanced alien science_.”

Tony knew from science. He knew about black holes, and fully accepted that an artificial one might someday be possible to create, but he'd also walked the Bifrost and felt the wild hum of its power, a power as ancient and limitless as the universe, entirely _other_ , even if half of Asgard had forgotten that was the case.

He knew Loki, and what his husband did, who (and what) Loki was. That wasn't science, that was _magic_ —something he'd bet even skeptical Jane had come to accept, these days.

“Yes,” Loki confirmed, adding even more quietly, “From the World Tree. From Yggdrasil. The core is a dragon’s heartstring.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “From _that_ dragon?”

“Yes. The heartstring of Niðhӧggr.” Loki rubbed his chest, where four wide, ragged-edged, but long-healed scars ran diagonally across his sternum.

To Tony, those scars seemed like a badge of honor, Loki rising to the occasion (with a little Avengers help), becoming literally the hero who slew the dragon, saving the people who’d made his pre-Midgard life so difficult, cementing his right to the throne of Asgard.

To Loki those meant something else, something difficult, and possibly sad.

Someday, Tony knew, he’d get the whole story. When Loki was ready. Until then, he could be patient (sometimes). He could wait.

Meanwhile, he let go of the wand temporarily to squeeze his husband’s hand again. “Babe, you are—and I mean this literally and in both the old and new senses of the word—totally awesome.”

Loki laughed, suddenly and—there was no other possible term for it—merrily. He _hated_ anyone using “awesome” in the more modern sense, and was likely to snap something along the lines of, “The Grand Canyon, best-beloved, is ‘awesome,’ this spaghetti, however excellently prepared, is not,” at anyone who slipped up and transgressed in front of him--only this time, he didn't.

“I adore you, my foolish dearest one,” he told Tony instead,

“Kinda adore you too, totally awesome husband.”

Loki laughed again, releasing his hand, and Tony went back to studying the wand, its hum in all his fingers now, and up into his hands. The closer he studied it, the less "sticky" the ancient wood appeared. It began to look more and more like some fantastic piece of art, both exactly like the real thing and like the absolute truth of the real thing, like looking at a sunflower just after looking at Van Gogh's painting of a sunflower, an image that made it impossible to ever see an actual sunflower the same way again.

"Yes," Loki agreed, in the same quiet voice.

"I felt some distrust for Ollivander, and in a part of myself, continue to do so. Yet..." Loki ran his fingertips lightly along the grain of his new wand. "The old man plies his craft with marvelous skill and feeling for the work. I suspect I wrong him with my distrust, for he has served both me, and those materials with which I supplied him, admirably well. He must be compensated."

Tony simultaneously didn't know exactly what those words meant, or why he found them slightly chilling, but he knew Loki. He trusted Loki. He just thought it best that he didn't handle that particular wand for one second longer.

“Lok, seriously, be careful with this thing, okay?” he said.

“I am always careful, though it seems not so, perhaps, now and then,” Loki answered, with yet a different flavor of slight smile, one that pretty much said the opposite.

Tony flopped over onto his back, glancing sideways at his husband. “Honestly, babe, what am I going to do with you?”

Loki leaned over, his lips--oh, gods, those lips!--brushing Tony’s ear, whispering exactly what would happen, once supper had been eaten and the children put to bed.

As always, Loki continued to be nothing if not creative.


	8. Twilfitt and Tatting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki presents Bruce and Tony with a little surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter references in passing events in the story between _Brave New Worlds_ (tentatively titled _The Golden City_ ), that doesn't actually exist yet--but will, the gods willing.
> 
> The line "Don't call me Shirley" comes from dialogue between the characters played by Robert Hays and Leslie Nielsen in the 1980 movie _Airplane!_
> 
> "duds"=clothing  
> Originally a slang word meaning only work or ultra-casual clothes, it came to be used, idiomatically, to refer to fancy clothes as well. An early use in print can be found in _News from Nowhere_ (1880), by William Morris.
> 
> The sublimely dapper Timothy MacKenzie "Tim" Gunn (born 1953) is an American fashion consultant, television personality, and actor. He's probably known best as the on-air mentor to contestants in the _Project Runway_ TV show.
> 
> A "pirate shirt" (also known as a "poet blouse" or "poet shirt") is a loose-fitting, pull-over-the-head type shirt with full bishop sleeves and, often, ruffled cuffs and/or large frills down the front. We _know_ Loki would not approve of the front-frills, though I expect he insists on a properly-tied cravat.
> 
> "ditto"=likewise, the same, as above  
> The word originates from the Latin _dico_ , meaning “I say" or "I speak,” which became the Italian word _detto_ and its regional variant _ditto_ , a form of the verb “to say.” It first appears in written form around 1625. Of course, as a teacher's kid, I'll always associate the word with the mid-century precursor of the photocopied, the "ditto machine" (aka spirit duplicator) which by a lost magical process copied documents using an alcohol-based solvent with an oddly addictive smell.

* * *

Tony couldn’t help himself—every single time Loki tappy-tapped them through the magic brick wall (through the frickin’ wall, dammit!) and into Diagon Alley, he found himself close to suffering whiplash, what with trying to look everywhere at once, every single thing around him so new and interesting and weird, his mind just sucked it all in and begged for more.

He felt like a kid with an extreme sweet tooth in the world's biggest candy store.

Loki tended to be a little (okay, a lot) more blase. Maybe growing up in a fantastical golden city most easily reached by crossing a goddamn trans-dimensional rainbow bridge through the stars gave him an advantage.

Growing up in a fantastical golden city most easily reached by crossing a trans-dimensional rainbow bridge _and_ having explored more than a few nooks and crannies of the known universe, _and_ having peeked into a couple—possibly considerably _more_ than a couple—alternate universes, that was.

Yup, Loki definitely had the advantage when it came to not geeking out over the Wizarding World's main shopping district. Under normal circumstances, Tony _hated_ shopping--but he had to admit he didn't hate this.

His husband gave him a loving (though more-than-slightly indulgent) smile and touched Tony’s shoulder, redirecting his focus with a nod.

"Huh?" For a second, Tony assumed one of the kids had engaged in a bit of cuteness, or maybe mischief, understandable enough given the new and fascinating environment surrounding them, but he quickly saw that wasn’t the case.

Hela (as she clearly considered her right), swanned ahead at the front of the pack, the too-warm breeze lightly ruffling her pristine white princess dress. She looked regal and unchildlike and unimpressed-by-lesser-mortals, which were more or less her default settings, though Tony did notice her gloved fingers moving every few seconds to stroke the shiny black wand tucked into her sash.

Somehow, even with only the elaborately-coiffured back of her head to enlighten him, he knew she was smiling.

Hela’s brothers—and gods, Jöri really had shot up, how tall was that kid going to get, anyway?—ambled along behind her at their own pace. Sleip, who’d first come to them at an apparent age of about fifteen looking exactly like Loki, still somehow managed to look more like Loki every day. Even Fen, sturdy to begin with, had started filling out more, leaving behind his child’s body as he headed for his teen years.

Tony gazed fondly at his three boys, who were exactly the kind of brothers that made Tony wish he’d had brothers—devoted to each other despite all their differences, utterly loyal—strolling together those few steps behind their sister, engrossed in quiet but cheerful conversation and seeming perfectly at home in this little slice of the world-within-their-world.

Come to think of it, the younger boys always were on best behavior with Sleip to keep them in line. Loki claimed (usually with a significant look in Tony’s direction), that this was because Sleipnir didn’t “encourage” them.

To which Tony had been known to respond with a _What? Me?_  look of his own, even though he knew perfectly well that he was guilty as accused.

This time, though, it wasn’t the kids Loki wanted him to notice, but Bruce.

His ScienceBro drifted over the cobbles of Diagon Alley, so excited he seemed to defy gravity, and with the oddest look on his face. His lips had parted, his eyes gone wide and shining, and some people might have said Bruce looked twenty years younger, but Tony, who knew him best, also knew that wasn’t exactly accurate. The truth was, his friend had started channeling his inner four-year-old-on-his-first-trip-to-Disneyworld (a pleasure the real four-year-old Bruce, or for that matter the real four-year-old Tony, never ever got close to experiencing for real in their non-existent childhoods).

Like Tony’s, those wide eyes were trying to drink in every magical thing at once.

If Tony had ever harbored doubts regarding Loki’s wisdom in insisting Bruce come along on this little adventure (which he hadn't), Bruce's expression in that moment would've nailed them in their coffin and buried them six feet under. If anyone needed a little sparkle brought into his life, that person was surely was his ScienceBro.

“Don’t call me Shirley,” Bruce murmured with a sideways grin, still clearly enthralled as hell.

Loki laughed. He and Bruce traded looks.

“Congrats, bro,” Tony told him, laughing too. He kind of wanted to hug Bruce, though that might have felt more than a little awkward for both of them, “You’re officially part of the family.”

“Beg pardon?” Bruce turned to study him, still grinning like a maniac.

“My husband means, dear friend...” Loki hugged Bruce in Tony’s place, a close, one-armed hug that he somehow managed to make look both graceful and natural, Bruce just leaning up against him, into the side of Loki’s crisp white linen shirt while Loki’s arm enfolded him warmly and securely.

Loki had dressed, as he always did on hot days, like the fucking English Patient (pre-full-body burns, that was) or like a model from a Ralph Lauren advertisement, that ultra-crisp shirt, sleeves rolled, and khakis that looked the opposite of how Tony’s khakis always looked, which was to say grubby, wrinkled, as if he’d slept in them while travelling up-river by open boat in some tropical nation

“Tony means," Loki went on, "That you have accessed, entirely without my intervention, that which Tony terms the ‘Lokiline.’ He spoke not a word aloud, and yet you heard him.”

“Seriously?” Bruce pulled away slightly in order to beam at them both. “That’s actually kind of…” He and Loki exchanged a second look, one of those not-uncommon-these-days glances-of-ultimate-understanding that the two of them seemed to have brought back from their sojourn in Evil Circus World.

Only the evil hadn’t really been in the circus, or carnival (or whatever the hell it was—maybe both). Loki, when he mentioned their little field trip to that place at all, talked about “Making Show,” whatever the hell that meant, because Tony had only Earth-based circuses for reference, and maybe it had been partly like that, but, even more, totally hadn't.

The actual evil had been in the world itself, in the psycho who'd dreamed that world up, and in damn near everything _but_ the little troupe of remarkable people who’d protected them. Tony didn’t know the particulars, because even after a couple years, Bruce and Loki still weren’t ready to share the whole story. He only knew that they’d bonded, and that world had made it necessary.

He wasn’t exactly complaining, either. Their friendship beat to hell what had come before, all those months when the two guys he loved best in all the world were constantly (if not literally) at each other’s throats.

“Think not upon such things, please, beloved,” Loki said quietly, one long, cool hand moving to rest gently on the back of Tony’s neck, calling him once more to the present, driving away the harsh memories. “You see, all is well with us. All is well.”

Bruce shot him a thumbs up, then, taking a page from the Rupert Giles Guide to Avoiding Emotional Scenes, pulled off his glasses and polished the lenses just a little too thoroughly.

“Rupert’s eldest also begins at Hogwarts this year,” Loki informed him. “He’s a rather quiet boy. I’ve asked Jöri to look out for him, and befriend him, should the opportunity arise.”

 _This is happening. This thing is really happening_ , Tony reminded himself, gazing out across the crowded street (or alley), the throngs of colorfully dressed people, many of them in family groups, tweens and teens in tow.

“That's sweet of you,” Tony responded, shaking himself out of the less-than-welcome reminiscences and any and all weird moods, adopting a tone of mock seriousness when he spoke again, “There’s magic in the air, my friends.”

“Indeed," Loki said, being unusually literal-minded as he more-or-less totally missed Tony's point. "You ought to be afforded an opportunity to perfect your shielding techniques for electronical devices. I, for one, would be overjoyed to be able to keep a computer alive for more than a quarter of a year. ” Loki paused there, gazing into the middle distance with an expression that could have meant anything from him experiencing pensive thoughts of his own on the subject of Evil Circus World, to the sudden flash of a completely separate idea that he wanted to chase down, to a sudden, intense pondering as to where his next snack could be found.

Tony gave him a gentle nudge. “Hungry, babe?”

“I shall wait,” Loki answered, cheerfully enough, meaning Evil Circus World PTSD probably wasn’t an issue. He bent down to scritch Mopsi’s ears, straightening again with the little pudgeball tucked under one arm. Ordinarily, the beast shed like a 70’s shag carpet, yet not a single jet-black hair marred the snowy expanse of Loki’s shirt.

Loki's absent-minded expression continued. “Even so early in the day, the heat not fully risen, Mopsi does not enjoy the warmth of this weather.”

“How does Loki feel about it?” Tony asked.

His husband shrugged. “I find it tolerable, I suppose, if not enjoyable. Explain to me again why Midgardians take such pleasure in visits to tropical locations?”

“Such as the middle of London?”

“I merely made the comparison,” Loki said, “In the knowledge that such temperatures are uncommon in these parts. Indeed, they were unknown in the earlier days of my life in Britain. Would it be considered impolite to meddle?”

“By all means, do away with the inconvenience of global warming,” Tony answered, laughing—because, even after half a decade, he still didn’t catch 100% of the time when Loki was joking and when he wasn’t.

Meeting Bruce’s raised eyebrow,  _Seriously?”_ look, he also had to admit that he wasn’t completely sure how powerful his husband had the potential to be, especially after having gained the so-called "Odin-Force" (better name desperately required--Tony preferred "Loki-Force," naturally) and all that went with it.

Pretty damn powerful sometimes. That much he’d seen.

“I will think upon the question,” Loki informed him.

“Cool. You do that, babe,” Tony answered, still not entirely certain if he was being pranked or if the entire scientific community would shortly be losing their collective shit as climate change just… vanished.

Such was life with the god of mischief.

“So, husband-o’-mine,” Tony said, hoping to escape out of these thoughty thoughts via a quick subject-change. “Where’s our first stop?”

“Madame Malkin’s is uncrowded for the moment. For the children, naturally.” Loki snapped out of his pondering, fully awake and cheerful as he called out to their eldest. “Sleipnir, dearest, as we earlier discussed, will you be so kind as to supervise your brothers and sister?”

Quite frankly, Tony didn’t blame his husband for wanting to slide out of that one. School uniform shopping with Fen and Jöri had always been a boring-but-bearable chore, quite unlike the unholy snit-fit that was trying to wheedle Hela into letting anything but high thread-count white linen or the softest of black silk-velvets to touch her (literally) lily-white skin. Regular Hela was a rational, mature and brilliant young lady. Uniform-shopping Hela transformed into a hellish hydra- (as opposed to Hydra) monster that combined all the worst traits of a ruthless corporate attorney, an operatic diva belting out an aria about revenge (at full force and at the top of her register), and an all-powerful god-queen of Ancient Egypt.

Nonetheless, Sleip, best-natured centuries-old teenager in the galaxy, smiled sunnily, perfectly happy to help out.

Hela contented herself with giving a huffy-yet-ladylike little sniff, clearly intended to indicate that she needed no supervision. Loki ignored her. So did Tony. After five-plus years, he’d learned when to engage, and when to steer well and completely clear.

“Were you aware, Bruce,” Loki said, “That the uniforms for First Year pupils are initially issued only in standard gray and black? The trim and accoutrements alter color magically after each student is sorted into his or her House.”

“I did kind of wonder,” Bruce answered, watching with them as Sleip shepherded his sibs across the street and through the door of a shop so intricately carved and glintingly gilded all over its front that it made Tony’s brain hurt. There was frou-frou and there was abuse of frou-frou, and that one definitely stepped over the line—but then again, wizards seemed to have slightly different design standards. There was more lime green and hot pink out there on the street than could’ve been found at a rave in the 80’s—though marginally less big hair. He had to give the wizards credit for that one.

It took Tony a minute to decipher the words “Madame Malkin’s” out of the manically swirly gold letters painted on the shop’s wide display window.

“Unfortunate font,” Loki commented, with a disapproving little sniff of his own. “However, I have arranged a small surprise. A surprise for the both of you.” His moment of typographic disapproval passed, giving way to a pleased but slightly shy expression, a look out of the old days, one that clearly said, _I hope I’ve done the right thing. I so want to have done the right thing._

“Which means we’re going where?” Tony asked, giving his husband’s hand a small squeeze of encouragement—even though he knew, from experience, that Loki’s surprises could be very… well, Loki.

“Twilfitt and Tatting's,” his better half responded. “As Madame Malkin’s is all very well… for the children…”

The “but” that followed that particular statement was clearly meant to be taken both as a given and as a negative review of Madame’s product, as in, “But I would rather stroll through the streets of London in all my naked glory than clothe myself in her product.”

“You see where Hela gets it?” Tony told Bruce, who actually kind of giggled. “So, Lok, I gather you asked around? You found out where your guy-crush Lucius Malfoy gets his duds?”

“You believe yourself amusing, husband, but you are sadly mistaken,” Loki answered, looking down on them from his ridiculous height (he always did seem to get meters taller when he said stuff like that), his tone scornful, even though laughter glimmered in his eyes and a grin hovered at the corners of his mouth. “I merely find the actor who portrayed him in the films attractive, and the costumes in which they clothed him striking. I would not, necessarily, wish to meet the man himself, as he seemed to me both spiteful and conniving, as did his scion. Also, in any event, the gods forbid that I should wear—as you call them—‘duds.’”

 _Bet you'd look hot as fuck, babe_ , Tony told him on the Lokiline, coaxing another little twitch of a smile out of his husband’s lips.

“I took the liberty of ordering for us all,” Loki mentioned, ushering Tony and Bruce before him through the door of a second shop of such perfectly classic elegance it was almost ostentatious, like the Manhattan apartments featured now and then in the high end magazines, so designed and clean-lined and overwhelmingly white-upon-white they always made Tony wonder how anyone could stay there and still manage to live any kind of ordinary, messy human life.

Not that this place seemed bad. For one thing, in place of all the white, these walls had clearly hand-crafted paneling of polished dark wood. For another, the place seemed totally his husband’s style, and Loki looked perfectly at home there in his casually perfect English Patient-slash-Ralph Lauren wear.

A low, mellow chime sounded as the door swung shut behind them, summoning forth a tall, slim older gentleman like a wizardy British Tim Gunn, wearing a robe of such understated perfection, over a three piece suit (ditto), it left Tony feeling not only underdressed on that particular day, but as if he’d never managed to dress himself properly for one single day in his life.

Which clearly wasn’t true. Years ago, he’d wisely switched to Loki’s tailor

“Your Highness,” this wizard said, bowing low before Loki, then straightening to take (reverently) the long, slim, white hand proffered to him by the sometime-King-of-Asgard. “Such a pleasure, always, to be of service. Your order is, naturally, entirely completed, to your exact specifications.”

Loki nodded in that way he had, somehow managing to look both regal and oddly approachable. Before he quite knew what was happening, Tony found himself being steered away to a small room off the main one, by what appeared to be the original Tim Gunn clone’s slightly-younger brother. Yet another brother conducted Bruce to a different room, leaving His Highness in the care of the original.

A flick of Brother Two’s wand left Tony stripped to his socks and skivvies. Another flick, and his new clothes unfolded piece by piece, his assistant explaining to him patiently how each was meant to be worn. He wondered if the outfits came with a manual.

 _I have a pirate shirt_ , Bruce informed him over the Lokiline, in a tone somewhere between laughter and despair. _Do you have a pirate shirt?_

 _Ooh, yeah,_ Tony responded _. And waistcoats. It would be a crime to call them vests. They’re clearly waistcoats. My pants have, like, forty buttons apiece._

And yet…

 _I look... really good, Tony._ Bruce’s mental voice had a funny tone, the tone of a guy who’d never thought of himself as attractive, ever, for even a moment of his existence—which Tony found heartbreaking, because he’d always found Bruce, with his smile and his warm, serious eyes, and his curls, completely adorable, and he knew for a fact (mostly because Loki, who heard everything, told him), that whatever split Betty and his ScienceBro apart, it wasn’t that. It had more to do, he suspected (though this Loki refused to confirm), with the fact that Bruce loved Betty, and Betty loved Bruce, but that Bruce had so little love for himself.

And gods, he hoped those little thoughts hadn’t traveled out along their connection.

 _I mean, for me_ , Bruce continued. _Really good_. A pause. _Are these clothes enchanted?_

 _Oh, buddy_ , Tony thought, shaking his head.

 _Only by the magic of really excellent tailoring_ , he finally answered.

 _I’ve never had anything tailored_ , Bruce confessed. Considering most of his friend’s wardrobe consisted of battered jeans, crumpled khakis, crew-necked sweaters and t-shirts with messages (ironically enough, considering his alter ego) espousing world peace, Tony could easily believe it.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t offered, it was just that Bruce mostly lived on another plane, where such worldly concerns didn’t really matter.

 _How do you feel?_ Bruce asked.

 _Good. Good! Like my husband really, really loves me_ , Tony answered.

He studied himself in the crystal-clear glass that covered all of one of the room’s longer walls. Compared to the dress-shirts Tony wore when forced to dress like an actual grown-up in New York, the piratey shirt felt feather-light and not in any way constricting, its fabric practically frictionless against his skin. The black pants (or trousers, or breeches, or whatever), fitted perfectly to his body. They looked like they ought to have felt miserably tight, only they totally didn’t. Ditto for the dark-red waistcoat. As for the robe… great gods of the _Aesir_ , that robe! The thing was a wonder of drapey elegance.

“The latest fashions, just in from Paris and Rome,” his assistant informed him, in a tone of understated pride, adding, “His Highness’s taste is exquisite.”

“That it is,” Tony answered hoarsely. His sight blurred for a second, and for a few seconds more he felt a little shaky. He’d always stuck to his own style before, and never let Loki dress him (the services of the estimable Mr. Pierre aside), except, just now…

He realized he was seeing himself in that moment, as Loki saw him, and that he actually _looked_ brilliant, handsome, reliable, like a man of wisdom, a man to be listened to.

“You guys do good work,” he said, his voice only breaking once. He tried on the other outfits in something like a daze, the fogginess not lifting until he’d rejoined Bruce and Loki in the outer room, where Tim Gunn One was feeding Mopsi a biscuit.

Bruce looked approximately as hazy as he felt. Loki, clearly in his element, conversed genially with Brothers One, Two and Three.

In that moment, though, his eyes sought Tony’s.

 _Did I do well?_ his look pleaded. _Have I pleased you?_

Tony found it amazing, now and then, that a guy as gifted, as accomplished, as confident in most areas as his husband, could still, sometimes, look so vulnerable.

“Okay,” he said, making his voice light, “From here on out I surrender all free will. I’m clearly not competent to dress myself, and turn the task over to you entirely, for all future occasions—because you, Loki, love of my life, truly rock at it beyond all rocking.”

“I shall delight to look upon you,” Loki said softly.

“If it wasn’t nine million degrees outside, you’d be looking upon me right now. Which, actually, I guess you are--at least the poorly-dressed version.” Tony squeezed his husband’s hand. “Really, babe, you done good.”

Loki (who, with a slight wave of one hand, vanished their three large parcels of clothing to somewhere, probably one of his pocket worlds) almost managed not to wince at his wonky grammar. Almost.

“I am glad you are pleased. Tell me, may we now seek some refreshment, or would you continue with the errands of the day? There are yet cauldrons to be purchased, I believe, and also quills and parchment. Hela will want a cat, I’m certain. Ought the boys to be given owls, or such?”

“Dunno,” Tony said. “Ought they?”

Mopsi barked as if to put in his two cents worth, his wrinkled little goblin face looking deeply offended. Owls, he seemed to say, were not welcome in his world.

“I believe so,” Loki answered decisively, after a moment's thought. “Perhaps they will want to send messages to us, without appearing to do so—and of course they will write to Sleipnir.”

“What about the Lokiline? Won’t it be working?”

“I know not. All will be heavily-warded. All will be strange, and I know not how I will be affected.” Loki’s hands lay still over his barely-mounded belly, as if to shelter the still-tiny tadpole within, and Tony realized in that moment how brave his husband was being. Their kids would never be any less-loved in his heart, a heart that possessed gears of feeling Tony’s didn’t even reach to, but he would still open the door to their bright, brave, beautiful, and soon-to-be-grown birds, letting them fly free.

He raised Loki’s left hand to his mouth, kissing the cool, smooth palm tenderly. “It’ll be okay, baby,” he said, hoping his voice came across as both hopeful and soothing. “It will. You’ll see. Besides which, isn’t there a bookstore that needs visiting?”

“You seek to tempt and distract me with books?” Loki responded, a touch imperiously. His eyes glinted, though whether that was with emotion or book-lust, Tony couldn’t exactly be sure.

“Why not? It’s worked before. Meanwhile, I’ll tempt you with Florean Fortescue’s ice cream emporium, where it’s blissfully cool, and you can discuss the exploits of Merlin at length with the proprietor.”

“Myrddin,” Loki corrected absently, though his heart wasn’t really in it. He was clearly considering whether it would be unseemly to order a triple-scoop, and whether, unseemly or not, he should just do it anyway.”

“Do it,” Bruce told him. “The sugar won’t hurt you, and you could use the calories.”

“Dearest of friends!” Loki pulled Bruce in for another hug. “And dearest of husbands!” Tony got a kiss on the top of his head. “Our children are going to school, I find myself most regretfully emotional, and I will indeed have as many scoops as I wish.”

“That’s the spirit, babe,” Tony told him, while Bruce, he suspected, spoke his own words of encouragement silently, inside Loki's head.

“Yes,” Loki said, answering the words not said. “Yes, that much is true, dear friend, and as a reward I release you both from any obligation to accompany the children and me to Flourish and Blotts. Five doors down and around a slight bend you will find a shop of divers cunning instruments, which I am certain you will find diverting. Tarry there, please, as long as you wish.”

“I’d be more impressed by your generosity of spirit in saying that,” Tony told him, “If I didn’t suspect you were trying to buy yourself extra bookstore time.”

“I will have my own studies at Hogwarts,” Loki protested, flashing a look of perfect innocence out of his big green eyes. "I will need, as it is said, to ‘get up to speed.’ Only now, refreshment.”

"Refreshment, by all means,” Tony answered, because, after all, it must have been at least an hour since Loki had consumed roughly his own body weight in breakfast foods. “Ya know, this is going to be the time I try pumpkin juice. It really is. The stuff can’t actually be as weird as it sounds, can it?”

“I shall let the children know where they may find us,” Loki answered, and that was that.

They left the neighborhood of Twilfitt and Tatting's holding hands, the three brothers watching them through the window as they went—which was more than a little weird but, the more Tony thought of it, not really. Professional and efficient as the Brothers Gunn had been, they’d just played host to a trio of exotic creatures inside their store. Who could blame their curiousity?


	9. At Flourish and Blotts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela Agonistes, or, even the most confident-seeming people (or goddesses, for that matter) have their moments of struggle and self-doubt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agonistes=to be engaged in struggle or combat (thanks to John Milton, badass poet, crappy human)
> 
> Mach 5=five times the speed of sound
> 
> Quelle suprise=a Franglish (French/English) phrase used ironically to indicate that the person saying it isn't, in fact, surprised at all
> 
> "Ilvermorny" is the North American School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. "Vitrugard" I made up out of whole cloth, as a name for the pan-Scandinavian/Finnish school of magical learning (I'm certain they bring in traditional Scandinavian and Finnish magics--as I'd hope Ilvermorny incorporates Native American tradition--in addition to the Merlinian system taught at Hogwarts and Beaux Batons). Roughly translated, the name would  
> mean "Home of The Wise."
> 
> "The Island of the Ever-Young" is best known as The Island of Apples, or Avalon
> 
> "The Dismal Lands"=another name for Helheimr, the Norse world of the non-Heroic dead.
> 
> Disapparating is, basically, disappearing at the start of a teleport, Apparating is reappearing at the end.
> 
> A Legilimens is a witch or wizard able to pick up on thoughts or feelings (it is not, Professor Snape would tell us scornfully, mind-reading).

* * *

On Day One, the day the letters came shooting down the penthouse chimney, frightening poor little idiot Mopsi half out of his plushy fur and turning all of their worlds (individual and collective) upside down, Hela had felt over-the-moon excited, more excited than was actually in her nature to _be_ excited, under usual circumstances—she was, after all, the level-headed one of the family.

Except that was a lie. In truth, of them all, only Sleip deserved that title—perhaps centuries spent waiting in an Asgardian stable had taught him the skill of patience, the knack of examining every question from every angle. Hela—whose real nature was to be dramatic (operatic, _Pabbi_ might--and sometimes did--say, with a wink and one of his sly, sideways grins) often found her brother’s degree of thoughtfulness infuriating.

“Only because you wanna be more like him,” her dad would say. “You hate losing your cool--admit it! You’re too much like me, Empress. Your controls are perma-stuck on Mach 5.”

Of course Tony Stark wasn’t her real dad. Her biological father (and Fen’s, and Jöri’’s) was… someone else. The "Other Guy," as her uncle Bruce might have said. The Asgardian.

But none of them ever talked, or even thought, about him.

Tony had already been with them, part of their family--however reluctantly, back then--from the moment they first opened their eyes to a cold, gray Manhattan morning, had loved them when the whole rest of the world would have seen them as freaks, and to Hela, only that mattered.

She now sighed and plunked herself down on on one of the stairways at the the back of the shop, where at least she could observe and/or indulge her thoughts in relative comfort. Her stairway formed one leg of an upside-down U, the gallery above--which held still more books-- supplied the U’s curving base, while a second, unoccupied staircase completed the letter.

 _Pick out a volume of your own?_ suggested her _Pabbi_ , who always found the words "I'm bored" beyond unacceptable.

Bored? In a world where books existed? Inconceivable!

Hela responded with an image of a raincloud.

 _Pabbi_ shook his head, but said nothing, most likely using all his considerable strength to stifle the words, _Bored? Gloomy? In a bookstore?_

Maybe dad would come to her rescue. After all, this place was all magic, all the time. Gods willing, he might be bored too.

Hela sent a wisp of her attention out in search of her dad's mind, only to discover her other parent in a long, narrow room completely stuffed with busily whirring mechanical devices, Tony rushing from one to another like a niffler in a jewelry store.

It figured. Leave it to her dad to find a room full of machines, even in Diagon Alley.

 _Quelle surprise_ , Hela whispered inside his head, before making her withdrawal. Her dad was like a kid at Christmas and she had no intention on raining on his parade--or on _Pabbi's_ \--any longer. Not when she loved them both beyond measure, loved them equally, even if dad wasn’t filled up with mysteries and surprises, like _Pabbi_.

Her moods were her own, and Hela would keep them to herself.

As if _Pabbi_ had heard her (most likely he had), his green eyes laser-beamed onto hers.

 _It's nothing_ , Hela responded. _Checking up on Daddy. Have to make sure he and Uncle Bruce are minding their manners, right?_

 _I believed that to be my responsibility_ , _Pabbi_ answered, affection for her, and for his husband, in every word. He always could squeeze more nuances, more touches of flavor and meaning, into his sendings than the rest of them. Only Fen, who communicated mostly in images, approached his subtlety. Dad usually sounded like one of those guys who Tweeted or Facebooked with their capslocks on.

 _Pabbi_ laughed softly inside her head. _Untrue, Hela! Untrue!_

 _Ha. Double ha! It is **so** true. Now go back to your books_ , she responded.

 _Pabbi_ certainly had plenty here to choose from. Hela and her brothers had long since obtained their textbooks, which had been set out in neat stacks near the front of the shop, to be swiftly sent away to one of _Pabbi's_ pocket universes. He had put aside a second mountain of volumes, intended for use as references in the courses he’d be teaching at Hogwarts, breezed through a collection of textbooks in the Muggle Studies section and picked out a few for Dad’s use (chosen, Hela suspected, more for their most-likely-unintended humor than for their reliability) and then began to drift gently, drawn wherever the currents took him within Flourish  & Blotts’ vast ocean of books.

Hela understood the attraction, though for her books never held _quite_ the same siren’s call. She considered herself a frequent, but not an obsessive reader.

Thinking of books, however, made her think of _those_ books. Ms. Rowling's books. Which in turn brought her mind back to where she’d begun—to the events of Day One. To the fireplace, the clatter of heavy envelopes, to Mopsi’s yelps and the way she had, for one of the few times in her life, felt quite carried away.

To say she’d asked a million questions, and speculated about a million different possibilities, would be an understatement.

Hela had certainly known, at least on some level, that Hogwarts existed, if only because her _Pabbi_ now and then received similar heavy envelopes—these sent by regular mail—from a place called Ilvermorny in Massachusetts. Pabbi never opened these, only gave one of his quiet laughs and tossed each one aside, usually into what dad termed "the round file" (by which he meant the wastebasket).

Hela had fished out one or two of these and brought them to Jöri, who possessed a useful talent for reading through envelopes without the envelopes needing to be opened. Afterwards they’d spoken together deep into the night, asking each other, over and over, “Will they ever send us letters? Could we ever, ever, possibly get to go somewhere where the people are like us?”

Sleipnir, of course, overheard the conversation. Before it got too late for them ever be able to get up for school the next morning, he came to where they sat, on the floor of Jöri’s and Fen’s bedroom, Fenrir snoring softly overhead.

“It’s not to be, loves,” Sleip told them, speaking in _Aes_ so they’d know he was serious. “We are people in only the most general sense, and there is no one in all the Worlds like us, excepting ourselves.”

“The Children of Loki,” Jöri had said, as if he was quoting something, though he wasn't. Tears shone in his eyes, unshed because he’d trapped them behind the inner eyelids he only possessed at home, among family, or when they visited The Jean Grey School, where it wasn't odd to look odd.

"The Children of Loki," Sleip echoed, with one of his kind smiles. He sat down on the carpet too, facing them, Hela’s hand in one of his hands, Jöri’s in the other.

“Besides,” he’d said, in a lighter tone, “If you were called to attend a school of magic, it would be Vitrugard, which the sons and daughters of the Northmen attend, or Hogwarts, where they teach magic in our stepfather Myrddin’s tradition.

“Oh, of course!” Jöri had said, and been comforted.

They had, naturally, heard many stories of Myrddin (or Merlin), their _Pabbi’s_ first dear husband. Myrddin who cared now for Vali and Narfi and Will, their lost brothers, on the Island of the Ever-Young, and who had sired their brother Sigvarðr, who _would_ insist on being called Sherlock.

Hela had not been quite as comforted, and she’d said nothing, even as her elder brother, whom she loved, raised her to her feet and led her back to her own room.

 _In a school of wizards and witches_ , she'd thought, _We would still be strange--but maybe we would not be **as** strange?_

And so, when their Hogwarts letters finally had come, she’d pored through the Harry Potter books as if they were guides to a distant and fabulous land—which, Hela supposed, they actually were. The thought of studying magic, of being immersed in a world of magic from morning to night had thrilled her beyond imagining—until, that was, the truth of the situation began to sink in.

The reality (a larger and colder reality than Hela had at first been prepared to acknowledge) was this: at Hogwarts she would be surrounded, at every hour of the day and night, by children.

Aside from Fen, Jöri, and baby Ed (who, as her brothers, scarcely counted), Hela didn’t particularly care for children, taken generally as a species. She found them… random. Arbitrary. Noisy. Overly inquisitive about things that were none of their business.

Furthermore, Hela knew, whatever house she found herself sorted into, those children would despise her, just as the children at Stark Academy, and the children at The Jean Grey School had done.

 _Pabbi_ had understood. His emerald eyes had locked upon hers (again, laserlike), and he’d asked her, quietly, “Are you certain, my dearest? Are you certain?”

Then, as she suddenly did now, Hela had wanted to cry, to give in, all at once, to a giant thunderstorm of tears, the way little Edwin sometimes did when he was very tired and also very vexed about not getting his own way. Usually, she wanted to be fully grown, but just now she wished she could be small enough again for _Pabbi_ to pick her up, to sing to her and rock her until everything felt pleasant again.

Hela never cried. Never. She never revealed fear, or showed when the dislike of others hurt her (and it did, it did hurt her, because she both did and didn’t understand the reasons for it).

 _Maybe dial back the haughty a notch or two, Empress?_ her dad would sometimes say, but even if she failed to do so, even if she continued to seem proud, and royal, and overly imbued with self-confidence, he’d love her anyway.

He knew how all those things felt, and she was precious to him, perhaps in part because, for all their differences in heritage, they two were not entirely different.

Children, however, saw those same qualities as a challenge, a reason to niggle, to mock, even to attack--and Hela, who feared nothing in the Nine Realms, who carried the power of Death in her hands, feared them.

They made her feel small. They made her feel as if any sense of belonging she ever experienced was nothing but illusion.

They made her want to cling even harder to her _Pabbi_ , who had walked through these very same fires and come out strong and whole at the end--not merely for reassurance, but as proof that all would somehow manage to go well.

That need, however, seemed to her weak, cowardly and, yes, childish, and so Hela pretended, even to herself, to have lingered here with _Pabbi_ in Flourish and Blotts because to leave him here alone, as the rest of the family hadn’t hesitated to do, would be an act of disloyalty, that the proper thing was to stay until he said it was time to go.

Tomorrow they’d travel to King’s Cross Station, board the Hogwarts Express at Platform 9 ¾ and, even as everything changed yet again, Hela would continue to appear perfectly calm, perfectly blasé.

 _You will_ , she told herself fiercely. _You will!_

As an experiment, Hela tried on the feeling that things wouldn’t be the same as they’d been at Stark Academy, or during the summer program at The Jean Grey School, that this really was a whole new country—no, a whole new _world_ , no worse for being so much larger than their small, comfortable self-contained tower world, and stuffed immensely full of possibility.

She’d been lucky in her own life, Hela knew. Far luckier than _Pabbi_ , forced to grow up in Asgard with only-now-and-then-attentive Frigga and loving-but-emotionally-awkward Uncle Thor, the royal library and its myriad books his only reliable friends. After all, she herself possessed a large, kind and clever extended family within the walls of her tower home. In all the places she visited by choice, from her home in the penthouse of Stark (aka Avengers) Tower, to Helheimr, to the shifting Betweens where she met with her Sisters, to the converted ice cream factory in Queens that she’d transformed into _Spellwerki’s_ headquarters, she was allowed to be entirely herself, loved just exactly as she was.

Surrounded by the Hogwarts children, there’d be little opportunity to slip through the veils to meet her namesake and mentor, Queen Hela of the Dismal Lands, or sideways to the Betweens where her Sister-Deaths could be found.

There’d be no sophisticated yet laughter-filled lunches with Auntie Pepper and Auntie Nat, no brainstorming sessions with her staff at _Spellwerki_ , no gravity-defying gymnastics with Uncle Kurt, no long, quiet hours spent perfecting her Advanced Placement homework while _Pabbi_ painted, or typed furiously in the same room, muttering aloud now and then to himself in _Aes_.

What might happen in the humdrum day-to-day of her school life had scarcely mattered before this. Hela had only needed to get through her lessons, maintain an ordinary human appearance (or reasonable facsimile), and follow (or appear to follow) the rules. At the end of each weekday, those few goals accomplished, she could allow the color to drain from her skin and resume her true life, in which mixing with her fellow students of Stark Academy in any but the most superficial of ways remained entirely optional.

Engendered of the same blood, carried in the same womb, joined by ties of love and common history, she was nonetheless unlike her brothers, and perhaps that, Hela thought, was another reason she’d lingered here in the bookshop long after the boys had gone.

Sleip had specifically asked her to come along with them. “We’re dropping in at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes,” her elder brother said, his eyes (a color that reminded Hela exactly of rain-washed new leaves in the spring, and so kind in their expression, always so kind) catching hers. “It’ll be fun, dearest, don’t you think? Jöri and Fen are quite looking forward to the visit.”

The gods help her, Hela had nearly caved. Sleipnir’s entreaties, his quiet voice and the loving way he spoke to her, could be bloody hard to resist at any time, and right now she felt badly off balance, with that same great need to cling to the familiar, completely unlike her usual self.

Still, even her uncharacteristic clinginess had its limits. Hela would actually rather have stuck pencils (or quills, allowing for time and place) into her eyeballs than spend five seconds in a place called Weaselys' Wizard Wheezes.

A joke shop.

The gods forbid.

A _joke_ shop.

Fen, especially, was going to be insufferable over the next few days.

Only then Hela remembered they weren’t going to be together after this, not really together, not in the old way.

Even her mind no longer touched Fen’s as closely as it had when they were small, and Fen was certain to be sorted in to Gryffindor (or possibly Hufflepuff). Jör would go to Ravenclaw, while she…

She wouldn’t.

She wouldn’t, and no matter how many times _Pabbi_ told her not to worry, that the houses, as Ms Rowling presented them (only _Pabbi_ , best-selling author, after all, of the _Sons of Asgard_ series, referred to her, quite off-handedly, as “Jo”) were only as true to life as the Sagas of the Northmen were true, which was to say a mingling of both truth and unintended lies, born of the hopes and fears, the insight and blindness, inherent in all tellers of tales.

Her discussions with _Pabbi_ all tended to go that way, and given that most of them were conducted in _Aes_ , the language of his deepest thoughts, they seemed to translate a little oddly on the best of days.

Hela glanced again at her _Pabbi_ , who appeared to be reading aloud to Mopsi in a harsh, guttural language, now and then laughing softly. The little dog had the facial expression of a scandalized maiden aunt, as if _Pabbi_ was telling him smutty jokes in the language of the goblins.

 _Gobbledygook_ , Hela reminded herself. It’s called _Gobbledygook_.

For all she knew, it was the goblins’ quaint manner of conjugating verbs that her _Pabbi_ found so hilarious, and Hela both despaired of him and loved him more fiercely than ever before, devastated now by the knowledge that they would be apart, that he, with his own odd little ways, would not be close to interpret each of hers to others.

She knew she could have called out to him, either aloud or in her mind, and _Pabbi_ would have come to her then and there--but she didn’t.

She let him continue in his own way, just as she’d done with her brothers, and with their dad.

“Sleipnir,” Hela had said, before they went—just that, just her eldest living brother’s name. Sleip, of course, had given a little smile and taken her meaning immediately.

“Dearest, you can’t…” he began, perhaps hoping to convince her that all would be well, all would be enjoyable, though in his heart he knew it would not be, not for Hela, at least. The jokes and pranks, the inherent silliness of the place would seem, to her, puerile and annoying.

Unlike Jöri and Fen (who, even though he spoke very little, played well with others and always had friends, mostly quiet, kind and cheerful boys like himself), she wouldn’t even look forward to meeting the other young wizards and witches who’d be at school with them.

Knowing herself, Hela also knew the likelihood that the other children wouldn’t like meeting her.

Jöri chided her frequently, in a half-gentle, half-irritated kind of way, about “her ways,” and perhaps that was the reason. Only Hela didn’t mean to have ways, it just happened. Perhaps, in their youth and openness, other children—real children--sensed what she was, sensed the doorways, close though invisible, that would open at the touch of her naked fingertips.

Hela sighed, resting her chin in her neatly-gloved hands. She felt homesick, not so much for Manhattan, or even Stark Tower, but for the past.

The realization came nearly as a shock. For years now, Hela had considered herself entirely mature and adult, waiting only for her body to catch up to her mind, but in that moment she felt far from either grown-up or experienced. Much as she despised her lingering desire to cling, she still felt helpless to leave.

Time dragged, and dragged, until even Mopsi had fallen fast asleep in the center of the shop, snoring loudly, flat on his back with all four little black paws dangling limply in the air, and even then _Pabbi_ showed no more inclination to depart than he had in the previous hour.

Hela sighed again, hating that she felt helpless to do anything but spy on her parent through the stairway's balusters, too conflicted even to lose herself in a book of her own. She'd leaned her forehead against the wooden spindles, preparing to sink entirely into her dismal mood, when--to her sudden surprise--she realized the other stair was no longer unoccupied. A second watcher slumped there, his posture echoing her own as he peered out through the wooden bars.

Hela also realized, without knowing exactly _how_ she knew, that this particular observer's eyes had, apparently for some time now, been fixed firmly on her.

 _Well, that’s interesting,_ Hela considered. As daughter of the god of mischief, she felt herself honor-bound to investigate—furthermore, to investigate by teleporting over to directly behind him, giving a brisk tap to the watching boy’s shoulder.

He startled most satisfyingly, letting out a small, stifled moan.

“You were staring at me,” Hela said.

“You Disapparated!” the boy exclaimed, grinning nearly ear to ear. “You’re never seventeen, which means you’re too young to Disapparate!” The words weren't accusing--he seemed impressed more than anything else, and, beyond that, impressed by the act of rebelliousness as much as by her skill.

Since he'd taken the time to study her, Hela felt free to return the favor. Her watcher was a tall, slim boy with blue eyes so pale they looked nearly silver, and blond hair so pale as to be nearly white--even lighter than Jöri’s silvery-pale hair. His skin was nearly as fair as Hela’s--not quite, but nearly. He appeared, despite the now-fading grin, a little nervous, a little shy, intensely lonely.

“Don’t be silly,” Hela answered, all her ways in full force, even though she’d found herself, strangely, taking a liking-at-first-sight to this pale boy. “That would break the rules against underage wizardry. I actually teleported. It’s not at all the same thing.”

Hela took a seat on the step beside the boy, smoothing her many-frilled white linen skirts over her knees.

“I’m Hela Stark," she said. "I start at Hogwarts this year.”

The boy gaped.

“And you are?” Hela prompted.

“M-malfoy. Scorpius.”

The boy blinked several times, rapidly, clearly approaching a state of panic, and it hit Hela, suddenly, that he was waiting for the same reaction she’d been waiting for—that slight darkening of the gaze, the disdainful curl to the lip, that he expected her not to like him every bit as much as Hela expected him not to like her.

Unexpectedly, in that moment, Hela felt only sympathy instead. It paired well with her immediate sense of liking Scorpius, whatever his last name happened to be. Preconceived notions, her _Pabbi_ had taught her, tended to be foolish.

Her dad put things a little more more bluntly. "When you assume," he said, "You make an ass of u and me."

“It’s all right,” Hela told Scorpius, quietly, as if she was telling a secret. “I don’t care who your father is. Or your grandfather.”

“Not even…?” The boy began, and Hela gasped, lips parting, as a thousand thoughts, a thousand emotions spilled instantly into her head. A Midgardian mind, a human mind, might have have broken in the flood--but Hela, not being born of Midgard, felt only tenderness instead.

“It’s probably not true anyway,” Hela reassured him, and for perhaps the first time in her life, tried to make the words kind, just as Sleipnir might have said them.

She wanted to take Scorpius's hand, but didn't. It wasn't time. _Soon_ , she thought, _But not yet_.

“Rumors rarely are," Hela continued, "And even the true ones aren’t entirely true, not in a complete way. Even if your biological father was somehow Lord Voldemort…”

“You’re a Legilimens?” Scorpius exclaimed breathlessly.

Hela shrugged. “More of…”

 _More of a goddess_ , she’d started to say, but caught herself just in time. She nearly laughed then, but stopped that, too, in the nick of time. It would not have been appropriate, and might have seemed cruel.

Maybe if something was the truth, Hela considered, it couldn’t actually be called boasting, but it could still very much sound like it, like loudly blowing her own horn, which perhaps wasn’t the best way to begin, especially with someone who didn’t seem to loathe her immediately. Besides which, this boy most likely didn't need a goddess, he needed a friend.

 _She_ needed a friend.

“Which is to say, yes. Something like that. I guess." Hela didn't know if she was capable of blushing, but she felt a faint warmth rising upward in her cheeks. "I pick things up sometimes. Anyway, I just meant to tell you, what your father—or not-father, for that matter—did or didn’t do is hardly your responsibility. My grandfather was one of the most evil beings who ever lived. As was my biological father, really. I, however, refuse to take shame from it. Whatever they did, that’s hardly my fault."

Scorpius's grin had began to spread again.

 _Shut up_ , Hela commanded herself. _Shut up, he's mocking you. Maybe not this instant, but he will!_ Only she didn't shut up. She couldn't.

"Ignore the other kids," Hela found herself saying. "Whatever lies they spread about you. ‘People suck,’ my dad says. To hell with them.”

Scorpius had begun to stare at her, wide-eyed, and for the second time that day, Hela wanted to weep.

“Hela?” _Pabbi_ called softly from the bottom of the stairs. “Dearest, I believe your dad is calling us?” His eyes shifted to the boy’s, emerald-green and penetrating—but kind for all that.

Hela suspected _Pabbi_ knew, and understood, what she’d been thinking.

Scorpius’s hand moved, tentatively, gently, until it rested on the back of Hela’s hand, warm against her cool, too-smooth skin. Amazingly, he didn’t react to the chill.

“Will you look for me tomorrow, on the train?" he asked, with another lightning-flash of grin. "Please, Hela?”

Hela found herself smiling back, almost shyly, though she almost certainly would have claimed she hadn't a gram of shyness in her nature. She allowed her mind to touch briefly against Scorpius's mind, against the strength and the decency and the fun of it, against a sense of mischief entirely without cruelty--and, most of all, against the hope of better times ahead.

In that instant, that one instant, Hela felt young instead of ancient, for perhaps the first time since she was born.

“It will be my pleasure, Scorpius,” Hela answered, and he gave back to her that same, wonderful, wide, joyful, face-lighting grin.

“Tomorrow, then, Hela!” Scorpius called after her, as Hela turned to leave.

“Tomorrow,” Hela agreed. Her face felt strange.

She thought she might--just possibly--have been grinning too.


	10. Platform 9 3/4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is packing for Hogwarts, dammit!--and then it's time to head for the train. All aboard!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coprolites are indeed pieces of fossilized feces. They're classified as "trace fossils" (as opposed to "body fossils"), because they provide evidence about an animal's behavior, such as what it ate.
> 
> The Corvidae Family of birds (which belongs to the Order Passeriformes) includes nutcrackers, jackdaws, ravens, crows, jays, magpies, ground jays and treepies.
> 
> " _A Spoonful Of Sugar_ ," composed by Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman, is Mary Poppins's tidying-up song, featured in the 1964 Disney film.
> 
> For a partial Nine Realms recap: Jötunheimr is the frozen land of the _Jötnar_ , or Frost Giants; Múspellsheimr is the Realm of _Eldjötnar_ , or Fire Giants, whose king is Surtr; _Aes_ is the language of _Aesir_ , who live in Asgard.
> 
> "Familiar" as in a spirit that attends a wizard or witch, often taking the form of an animal.
> 
> Tic-Tac-Toe is the game also known as Noughts and Crosses.

* * *

If Tony had ever possessed any doubts about his husband’s degree of military training, that morning put them to rest.

Sleipnir, he considered, had been several times smarter than the rest of them. Number One Son had called out cheerily, “Going to visit Sherlock, meet you at the station!” before they’d even gone down to breakfast and exited stage left, bound for his brother's place, at as fast a pace as he could without actually appearing to hurry.

_It's just the last minute packing_ , Tony told himself. _How bad could it be?_

Ha-fucking-ha. Like a forced march through Jötunheimr, that's how bad it could be, he discovered.

Like a forced march through Jötunheimr, without even the comfort of a decent cup of coffee, because the so-called coffee at _The Leaky Cauldron_ appeared to be brewed from fossilized dung ("From coprolites!" Loki had informed him cheerfully, between giggles, observing Tony's face after his first sip of the foul beverage)--there was no other possible explanation for its unique aroma and taste--that was indeed how bad it could be.

Which meant all Tony, Bruce and Mrs. Ransome could do was stand back, hold tight to toddler Ed as if for dear life, and watch Loki transform into a weird (not to mention kind of scary) combination of Mary Poppins and Julius Caeser subduing the Gauls, as everyone’s trunks snapped open and quills, books, cauldrons and robes flew up and down the hall at lightning speed, folded themselves with precision (the robes, that was, and other assorted wearables) and stowed themselves in perfect order in the depths of the trunks.

When Tony offered to sing, “ _Just a Spoonful of Sugar_ ” for his benefit, the glare Loki returned to him promised slow and painful death.

“I did say I’d help,” Tony reminded his husband.

Loki muttered something in _Aes_ that Tony assumed was less than complimentary. Probably something along the lines of “your help is the kind of help that isn’t,” a phrase Pepper had repeated more than once during their relationship, only ramped up to a level of pissed-offness that only the scion of a warrior culture, who'd been alive more than a thousand years, could possibly have achieved.

That wasn’t his husband usual style—Loki might snark, now and then, but he tended to be fairly indulgent about Tony’s foibles, generally speaking. Today, however, Loki appeared to be both more-than-mildly morning-sick and monumentally nervous, putting him very much not in the mood to suffer fools (namely Tony), interruptions (the kids) or delays (the universe, currently out to get him on a personal level) lightly.

Even the daily ravens from Asgard stayed out of Loki’s way, perching on opposite ends of the curtain rod of his and Tony’s room with their heads pulled down between their shoulders and half-baleful, half-terrified looks in their glowing red eyes.

“Do yourselves a favor and wait,” Tony told them. “Unless the Golden City is at this very minute being sacked by Surtr and a horde of the denizens of Múspellsheimr, you’d be _way_ better off talking to your boss on the train.”

The ravens glanced back and forth at one another for a moment, then ruffled their feathers in what appeared to be the corvidaen equivalent of a shudder.

“Smart birds,” Tony agreed. He’d come to kind of enjoy Huginn and Muninn, over the years. They had an enviable talent for being sarcastic without saying a word.

Mopsi, who tended to be sensitive, just hid behind Tony’s legs, now and then emitting a mournful whine.

When everything had been packed, however, and the trunks safely stowed away in a convenient pocket universe, Loki not only turned smiley, but more than ordinarily pleased with himself.

“Did you see me?” he asked Tony. “I marshaled the troops. I was ruthlessly efficient.”

The troops in question, namely the triplets--squeaky-clean, impeccably dressed and arranged against the far wall in order of height--appeared slightly shell-shocked, even Hela. Loki-as-military-commander, a side of him that usually only appeared during his Avengers duties, was an unfamiliar sight for their kids.

“Ready to go?” Tony asked. Since he valued his life, he kept all laughter internal. “Grab your familiars, munchkins,” he told the triplets. “Let’s hit the road.”

The new pets had already been fed, watered and secured in their cages, a process Mopsi (who tolerated even a leash only for the sake of appearances) turned his squashed-in nose up at completely, as something that applied only to lesser beings, such as cats and owls, or the hedgehog Fen had somehow acquired, despite the fact that the Hogwarts letters had clearly stated, “a cat, an owl, or a toad.”

Broomsticks had also been purchased, in equal defiance of the rules, with Loki commenting lightly (with an added breezy wave of the hand), “The children are certain to qualify for their respective house Quidditch teams.”

Given the kids’ Asgardian abilities, that probably was true. Possibly cheating, but true—though if the triplets ended up sorted according to Loki’s predictions, either Gryffindor or Hufflepuff would soon be at a distinct disadvantage. Maybe some other child-of-a-god could take up the slack.

Tony held his tongue about both the broomsticks and the hedgehog. For one thing, Loki could out-argue him at any time, on pretty much any subject, and for another, he liked the hedgehog, which had soft-yet-poky hairbrush-esque bristles and a smiling, pointed little face, like a whimsical illustration from a children’s book. Besides, to Bruce’s delight, the hedgehog had willingly eaten scrambled eggs out of his hand, tickling his palm with its whiskers.

“It’s so cute!” Bruce exclaimed.

Tony gave him a “Seriously, bro?” look, but Bruce was too charmed by his prickly new pal to be shamed out of the infatuation.

Jöri’s newly acquired animal chum wasn't a serpent after all, but a barn owl with a heart-shaped white face, which now and then roused from its daytime sleep to hoot conversationally. He'd made the decision after Loki assured him that there would be plenty of wild snakes on campus for him to charm, not to mention the giant squid and "other denizens of the depths of the lake."

Both _Pabbi_ and son seemed to find this incredibly cheering.

Hela’s sleek Egyptian cat rounded out the trio of familiars. She appeared monumentally aloof, even by feline standards, and with her golden eyes glinting through the grill of her crate, she appeared to be plotting the downfall of humankind.

_That particular cat and Hela_ , Tony thought, _Ought to get on like a house a-fire._

“Are we fully prepared?” Loki asked, actually biting his nails—a first for Tony's perfectly-groomed-at-all-times husband—clearly as apprehensive as if it was his first day of school, and not the kids’. All the way to King’s Cross Station, in the town car Tony had hired, he held on to Tony’s hand with nearly-bruising strength, now and then breathing pale-purple fumes from a small, jeweled flask the ravens had brought down from Asgard, which Loki said was some sort of Golden City aromatherapy morning-sickness cure to supplement his daily dose of potion.

He’d been a lot like that when he’d started teaching at NYU, Tony remembered. Loki wanted to do well, always. He also had a tendency to expect the worst.

Tony passed Ed off to Mrs. Ransome, leaving both arms free to wrap around his husband.

“You’ll be brilliant,” he whispered in Loki’s ear. “You always are.”

_I am in no way concerned_ , Loki mentally lied through his teeth.

Seconds later, he continued. _Tony, are you aware? Hela has made a friend._

_Seriously? A kid friend?_ That was a first. Hela’s buddies tended to be ancient goddesses, covert operatives and human embodiments of Death. Actual children—not to put too fine a point on it—often found her a little creepy.

Tony didn’t think his daughter had been in possession of an actual child friend since the end of second grade.

_Indeed. A boy of her apparent age. They met yesterday, at the bookstore._

_You don’t say? I thought she was just pretending not to be nervous._

Hela always did pretend. Good thing she had a _Pabbi_ who saw through her so clearly she might as well have been transparent, and who understood most of her issues. Currently she was sitting across from him, looking like an illustration from a Victorian children’s book about how to be Modest (with a capital M) and Virtuous.

Jöri, beside her, appeared to be trying not to puke—not because of Miss Modesty and Virtue, but because he was fighting a Loki-sized case of the nerves. The poor kid, he'd always friends, mainly the cream of the crop of other smart and decent boys like himself—but he also always stressed about meeting new people, especially when that also involved a change of location.

Jör been so hyped up that morning he hadn’t been able to eat breakfast. Fen, who worried about nothing, kindly took care of his portion.

_So, a good kind of kid friend?_ Tony asked, but Loki, although he seemed pleased, didn’t clarify, which probably meant the child in question would turn out to be the grandkid of a Death Eater, or something equally heinous.

_And in what way would he be responsible for either his grandfather’s occupation or alliances?_ Loki responded, in a tone of pre-snit, grandfathers, understandably, being kind of a sore spot for Loki.

_It was a stupid thought_ , Tony answered, holding his husband a little closer. _Kindly forget it ran through my head?_

_Perhaps the excitement of the day has distracted you also,_ Loki said, generous enough to give Tony an out instead of holding his words against him.

More than that, Loki was right, Tony realized. He definitely had a ball of excitement/anxiety/worry the size of a honeydew melon knotting his own stomach, probably the equal of Jöri’s. He kept gulping air, and hoped that his hands weren’t visibly shaking.

Bruce, on the other hand—damn him!--appeared positively serene, chatting with Mrs. Ransome as he played one game after another of Tic-Tac-Toe with Fen. He even looked younger, that morning, than Tony had ever seen him, and open to absolutely anything that might happen.

He smiled when he caught Tony watching, and Tony thought, with a sudden back-of-the-eye prickling warmth, _I'm so glad you came with us, my brother. I'm so glad we can share this._

"Me too," Bruce told him, his kind eyes crinkling at the corners.

In either a million years, or no time at all, they’d reached King’s Cross Station, with its façade of warm golden masonry and two big arched windows like smiling eyes.

“It looks friendly,” Jöri said.

Tony had to agree. Even from the outside, the station did look friendly, welcoming, and the inside--once they'd managed to disembark from the big, black sedan, kids, adults, familiars, hand-baggage and all--looked magical, its arching dome of white lattice and diamond-shaped panes like something that might have been built by Professor Tolkien’s elves.

Loki turned to him with one of his sudden, miraculous grins, gripping Tony’s shoulders tightly, his whole face shining with excitement. Tony reached up, cupped that excited face between his hands and rose on his toes to kiss his husband, feeling Loki’s smile, unquenchable, against his own lips.

“Dad!” Hela exclaimed, mortified.

“But I am happy now, dearest,” Loki responded. “Happy and quite content.” He looked content, even as his hands left Tony’s shoulders and he bent a little to lift Ed from Mrs. Ransome’s arms. “For now our adventure begins!”

With that, he shepherded their entire family off toward the older part of the station, where trains, coming and going, clanked busily over multiple tracks. Here the walls were red brick, the lattices black, set with rectangular panes in the arched roof high above them, all of it darker, but not in a threatening way, more as if, in stepping out of all the bright whiteness, they’d stepped back into an earlier age, with its own type of magic.

Not unexpectedly for a Thursday morning shortly before noon, the place was a zoo, all the more so because so many of the people heading the same way they were heading carried cages or kennels, most holding some variety of exotic pet. There also seemed to be an abundance of big, black trunks, awkward enough to make Tony glad to have a husband who controlled a pocket universe or two, in place of normal rolling bags. He also noticed a number of questionable fashion choices.

Tony counted platforms until they’d reached Number 9, with Platform 10 visible ahead, in the not-too-distant distance.

They stopped there at the barrier, which was just as described, red brick and looking solid as hell.

Tony knew other passengers, Hogwarts bound, had passed through ahead of them, his eyes just kept missing the trick. One minute a group would be there, trolleys, odd clothing, owls and all, but the next they just… wouldn’t.

They’d be gone, without even a ripple.

Mrs. Ransome reached out and took Bruce’s hand, her clothes wavering, unexpectedly, into a neat navy blue cloak and matching, slightly-pointed hat. “Honestly, Dr. Banner, it won’t be so bad. Here, I’ll bring you through.”

"Uh..." Bruce blinked at her, looking more than slightly owl-like himself. "Did she just...?"

Loki threw back his head and laughed, eyes sparkling with mischief. Even Edwin clapped delightedly.

One step forward and Bruce and Mrs. Ransome were gone. Tony rubbed his eyes, then rubbed them again as the triplets, animal cages firmly in hand, walked side-by-side through the barrier together.

“Beloved, are you prepared?” Loki asked.

“Apparently not!” Tony answered, but he trusted his husband, always, and so he let Loki take his hand and lead him (Tony scrunched his eyes shut tight) from the ordinary Muggle world he knew, and through to the world on the other side, to Platform 9 ¾, where the big, shiny red-and-black engine waited, puffing steam.


	11. One for All, All for One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela and friends on the Hogwart's Express

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "One for all, and all for one" (originally, " _Un pour tous, tous pour un_ " is probably best known as the motto of The Three Musketeers, heroes of Alexandre Dumas, _père's_ 1844 novel of swashbuckling and intrigue.
> 
> William Shakespeare originated the phrase "passing strange" (which sounds so much more mysterious than "very, very strange") in his play _Othello_ (circa 1603).
> 
> Multi-talented British author (of _Seven Pillars of Wisdom_ )/diplomat/archaeologist/military officer Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888 – 1935) is perhaps best known for serving as a liaison between the British and Arab leaders during WWI. Thanks largely to his own vividly-written accounts of his many exploits, along with some embellishment on the part of the press, he won international fame as "Lawrence of Arabia," which was also the title of David Lean's 1962 film about Lawrence's wartime adventures, in which he was memorably portrayed by then-30-year-old actor Peter O'Toole (who really did wear the hell out of those robes).
> 
> The phrase "a stranger in a strange land" comes to us from the King James Version of _The Bible_ ( _Exodus_ 2:22, "And she bare a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land...").
> 
> The educational concept of a "teachable moment" (meaning a point at which when learning something either becomes possible or is easiest) first became popular around 1952, mainly because of the book _Human Development and Education_ , by Robert Havighurst.
> 
> 3 meters=9 feet, 10 7/64 inches
> 
> Fans of the 80's X-Men may recognize the name of Hela's ballet tutor, who she's clearly inherited from Kitty Pryde.
> 
> The cat-headed Egyptian goddess Bastet presided over the home (which she also protected from evil spirits), domesticity, women's secrets, cats, fertility, and childbirth.

* * *

The wizard children--along with those of their parents who’d ventured aboard the Hogwarts Express either to bid final fond goodbyes, or to wrestle the unwieldy school trunks up onto the luggage racks--mostly pretended not to look as _Pabbi_ made his way up the steps and into the train car.

Pretended, Hela noted, without too much success, because _Pabbi_ , with his billowing pale-gold robes and swinging black plaits, and so tall the top of his head barely missed brushing the ceiling, was indeed a sight to be seen. When he pulled Hela’s own huge trunk seemingly out of thin air, her brothers’ trunks following quickly after, the staring became obvious.

 _Pabbi_ , of course, seemed oblivious (seemed, of course, being the operative word, because if Hela knew anything about that particular parent, it was that he was rarely inattentive to anything in the world around him--quite the contrary). He also made it look as if producing three giant boxes out of absolutely nowhere wasn’t the least bit remarkable, just something everyone did every day.

Smiling down at Hela, shifting baby Ed over to one hip, he hoisted those same huge trunks up into the overhead luggage racks one-handed, without the least display of effort.

Hela listened to the whispers running up and down the length of the car with a certain satisfaction, and couldn’t help but grin back at him.

 _Nicely done, Your Magnificentness,_ she commented inside his head, _You do know everyone’s watching?_

 _Perhaps I’m hoping to avoid having tacks left on my chair at some future time,_ he responded. _Are tacks still left on teachers’ chairs, or is that a prank of the previous century?_

 _At this point_ , Hela said drily, _I think you're fairly safe from pranks in general. Just don't--as a particular favor to me--be **that** professor who gives all the homework, please?_

“Would I do such a thing?” Pabbi replied aloud. He gave her trunk a final pat, as if to settle it in its perch. “At any rate, there we are, my love. All is settled. The staff will help with your luggage at the other end, and see it safely to your dormitory.”

“Or I could just waft it after me, as on a gentle breeze,” Hela countered, though she knew better. She’d promised already to give her natural magic a rest and stick only to the kind taught at Hogwarts. "Merlinian Magic," as _Pabbi_ called it--the magic of wands and potions and spells-- rather than that which lived within each cell of her body, a magic of intent and creation, that drew on the fabric of the universe.

Her brother Jöri had made the same promise. Fen, on the other hand, had turned into a wolf of unusual size, and refused to change back again all day.

“Someone is his _Pabbi_ ’s son,” Dad had commented, which had made _Pabbi_ laugh out loud.

Watching him now, Hela realized her _Pabbi_ must feel just as cheerful, just as excited, as he had on the day the letters came. Back home in New York, in the tower, he always had to be so careful, to hold in a huge part of his ridiculously great power--a power that had only grown since his rightful ascension to the kingship of Asgard--partly for his own sake and the sake of those around him, partly to avoid blowing up all Dad’s machines. At Hogwarts, a place where magic was everything, he’d be free from most of those constraints.

The school, he’d explained to her—borrowing one of Dad’s images—worked like a giant battery, absorbing or supplying magical energy as needed. _Pabbi_ wouldn’t have to monitor his every thought and movement, because Hogwarts would do it for him.

 _I never actually intended to show off, you know,_ he told her, sounding slightly wistful. _Not as such. I fear I became excited, carried away by the moment, and it merely… happened._

“I know, _Pabbi_ ,” Hela answered aloud, sorry that she’d caused him even an instant of shame or regret, states he still slipped into, now and then. The truth was, he was young inside, in ways she was not, and he did get excited, carried away, even. He might easily have forgotten that his tremendous _Aesir/Jötunn_ strength wasn’t normal, even in the magical world, that not everyone traveled with a useful array of pocket universes at his beck and call—that things completely normal for him might seem passing strange to anyone else.

It wasn’t that _Pabbi_ exactly minded showing off a little, from time to time, or that he wouldn’t tease the wizards around him with a combined display of his physical strength and palpable aura of magic—it was just, Hela realized, not the path his mind followed at this moment. She could feel him missing her already, and missing her brothers, regretting, even, that their sure-to-be-long lives had begun with such a rapid childhood, that the three of them had grown up so quickly.

"Pardon?" _Pabbi_ looked down on her, one brow raised, his magic so strong it shed occasional flashes of gold or green, like fireworks in miniature, into the air around him.

“Nothing,” Hela answered, loving him so much it almost hurt, and wanting, as she always did, for him to be happy.

“Just admiring the outfit," she teased. "I’m not quite sure, though, which that particular robe says more--whether it's ‘A King Amongst Wizards” or ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’”

 _Pabbi_ laughed. “The actual Lawrence, or…?”

“Oh, I’d say the Peter O’Toole version, wouldn’t you?”

 _Pabbi_ flashed her an image of the tall, handsome actor, the imaginary Lawrence, dancing beneath the sun in his costume of white-and-gold robes, a shining camouflage for the character he played, meant to make Lawrence seem less of a stranger in a strange land, more as one with the people he’d joined with in that foreign place.

“Hela,” _Pabbi_ said, the slightest air of “teachable moment” hovering around him. “You do realize--we are also 'people.’ So to speak.”

 _Pabbi’s_ robes, Hela considered, didn’t really make him seem more like anything, not more like a wizard or a Muggle or an actor in a movie. Like everything he wore (and _Pabbi_ really could wear the hell out of any number of things), they made him look exactly like himself, which was fine with her.

She didn’t need him to blend in. She already had a normal(ish) dad in Tony, who she loved (nearly) as much as she loved _Pabbi_ , but she constantly found herself helpless not to adore _Pabbi’s_ splendidness, his strength, the way eyes followed him everywhere he went.

Just now, she couldn’t help but fling her arms around his waist and hold on as if, the moment the train started, they’d be apart forever.

Which was ridiculous. They’d be at the very same school. They’d see each other every day.

“How can we even call it a parting?” _Pabbi_ asked, his green eyes catching and holding hers.

“We can’t,” Hela answered, stepping back a little, as if to set her perfectly pristine frock to rights, though what she really needed was shake her internal self back into some kind of order. “We shouldn’t. You’re right. I’m an idiot.”

“Never, my Hela,” _Pabbi_ answered, taking her hand, his skin cool against Hela’s through the mesh of her gloves. “No, you are not, beloved. You are brilliant in all things.”

 _Which is maybe—kind of—my problem_ , Hela thought.

To distract herself, as a way, even, to hit reset, she glanced up the car. Most of the other children had now retreated into their own compartments, and their parents, farewells said, had disembarked. Even Fen and Jöri had already moved on, abandoning her, their luggage, and even their new pets as they went in search of some of the boys they’d met at that Wizard Wheezing store.

“Dearest, you may always come to visit,” _Pabbi_ said. He kissed her gloved hand, then put her a little away from him, the better to observe her eyes again, to read her as he read his books. His thumb ran softly across one of Hela’s high cheekbones, such an exact, if smaller, copy of his own.

Hela shut her eyes, preserving that moment, making it something she could keep forever close, a place she could return to again and again in her mind.

“Look now.” _Pabbi_ squeezed her shoulder gently. “Hela, here is your friend.”

Hela’s eyes popped open.

 _Pabbi_ was right—Scorpius had come aboard. His pale, pointed face looked even whiter than it had back in the bookstore, the lines of it tense, apprehensive, as he glanced up and down the car, during the five seconds it took him to spot her waving hand.

Scorpius immediately dropped his end of the trunk he’d been helping to carry and rushed to her, causing the tall, thin man who had the other end—clearly her new friend’s dad—to give a grunt of protest.

The man wore a black coat, buttoned tight all the way up to the collar, a coat that had to be too warm, even if the weather had turned far crisper than the heat wavish days that had come before.

He bore a strong resemblance to his son—or his son to him—except that his face had the kind of pinched expression that comes from long-term stress, bad memories and pride.

He also had a pronounced and advancing case of early-onset male pattern baldness.

“Hela!” her new friend called out. “I’m so glad… that is, I was afraid I wouldn’t find you, but here you are!”

“And here you are, Scorpius,” she answered, taking his hand between her gloved hands, letting him feel her welcome, how glad she was to see him again.

Scorpius grinned back at her, taking it all in, full of so much happiness and light that at that moment he didn’t resemble his father in the least.

Draco Malfoy, on the other hand, looked increasingly sour, as if trying to gauge Hela's degree of pure-bloodedness and suitability by looks alone.

Immediate mischief, Hela decided, was required.

She released Scorpius’s hand and turned to _Pabbi_ , dropping into one of the stage-worthy curtsies her ballet tutor, Ms. Stevie Hunter, had taught her.

“My King,” she said, in her most respectful tones, “Your kindness to me is too great.”

“You deserve no less, dear Princess,” _Pabbi_ answered, with almost ludicrous dignity, catching on to the game at once. “Fare well upon your journey, and may the _Nornir_ bless your endeavors.”

“And yours, Majesty,” Hela murmured, bending over his ringed hand.

 _Did I lay it on too thick?_ she asked.

 _Perhaps a warning first, upon the next occasion? Pabbi_ replied, though his laughter rang in bright notes inside her head.

Baby Ed, on the other hand, ruined the faux-solemn moment by giggling out loud.

“You silly, Lala!” he told Hela, using the baby name he’d called her from the first, though he could now enunciate her real name perfectly clearly.

“I am Loki Stark, sir,” _Pabbi_ informed Scorpius’s father—without a doubt, the one-and-only Draco Malfoy, failed Death Eater and bully--extending his hand to be shaken in the most kingly way imaginable.

Mr. Malfoy hesitated a moment before taking that elegant hand, and Hela could see why. Not only did _Pabbi_ appear about three meters tall at that particular moment, his magic moved around him in a shifting wall, limitless, mysterious, and yet perfectly restrained.

“Loki of…?” Draco started, but didn’t go on. News of strangers, it seemed, traveled fast in the Wizarding World.

 _Pabbi_ gave him a vague, modest, _Yes, of course, it is I, the King of Asgard, but I am traveling incognito_ kind of smile. His emerald eyes seemed to drill into Mr. Malfoy’s, grey eyes with irises so pale they looked like vaguely dirty water.

Seconds later, Scorpius’s father exited the train, dazed and nearly staggering, like a cartoon character that had recently been thwacked over the head with a frying pan.

“He’s not really so bad, my _pater_ ,” Scorpius said shyly. “Not in some ways. Not really. He and mum have always been good to me.”

 _Pabbi’s_ smile this time was normal and friendly, not contradicting a word Scorpius said.

“Shall I lift up that trunk for you, Scorpius?” he asked.

“Er... no, sir, I can manage,” Scorpius answered, but _Pabbi_ helped him anyway, snugging the trunk neatly onto the overhead rack across from Hela’s. Once everything was secure, he slid the owl and hedgehog cages up against a bench, where, with luck, no one would trip over them.

Straightening from that little chore, he allowed his hand to rest gently on Hela’s hair, and she knew, in that moment, that the last thing _Pabbi_ wanted was to leave her, but not only had Edwin begun to get restless—probably just about ready for lunch, followed by his usual afternoon nap—he’d sensed that prolonging this goodbye-that-wasn’t-really-a-goodbye would only make things harder for both of them.

“I received express orders from Jöri to remain invisible,” _Pabbi_ said, “Or, at the very least, out of sight for the duration of the journey, as parents, I gather, are innately embarrassing to young scholars on any number of levels. For that reason, the whole shameful mob of us will occupy the very last compartment of the very last car of this train, with solemn promises not to reveal ourselves for any reason short of attack by Dementors. Do give your brothers my love, though, Hela?”

His eyes didn’t exactly look teary, but they did look nostalgic, a million memories shining in their depths. He bent, then, to brush Hela's cheek tenderly with his lips.

Edwin, on the other hand, delivered a big wet sloppy kiss and left a series of sticky purple fingerprints on the shoulder of Hela’s dress—a stain _Pabbi_ whisked away, with a gesture, in the moment before he Disapparated.

The train whistle sounded, high pitched and thrilling, and the entire carriage shuddered as the steel wheels began to turn upon the tracks, gaining slow momentum. Steam and smoke bellowed out to mingle with the late-morning mist, obscuring the faces of those who still watched from the platform.

Hela felt, in that instant, such a sense of nothing at all being real that it seemed to her the Express might have been accelerating into a cloud, or through a dream. She found herself sinking down on the plush-upholstered bench, on the side of the compartment that faced away from London, out toward the new and ever-approaching world.

Scorpius, momentarily overcome with shyness, perched on the bench across from hers, watching as Hela coaxed her recently-acquired cat, Bastet, out of her luxurious carrier and onto her lap.

Bastet, Hela realized, reminded her a great deal of Queen Hela, her good friend--imperious and proud, but with a wicked sense of humor. She arched her sleek-furred back and switched her tail, as if swishing a wand through the steps of an extremely complicated spell. Her triangular ears, spread wide on her equally triangular head, swiveled, hearing things Hela wasn’t sure even she herself could hear.

“She’s really beautiful,” Scorpius murmured admiringly, and Bastet’s tail-swishes turned approving.

“I have a Great Grey Owl," he continued, "Though mum said that was too much, too…” he paused. “That she was… ostentatious. She is quite large, too heavy for me to carry, but _pater_ says he’ll have her fly up with a treat, perhaps a box of sweets, and after that, she’ll stay with me at school. I’ll be glad to share, if you like. The sweets, I mean. Or if you wanted to send a message...” He glanced toward the spot from which _Pabbi_ had Disapparated. “To someone.”

“You have a million questions, don’t you?” Hela asked, which made Scorpius laugh.

“You know I do!” he answered, then startled as a smallish boy with messy dark hair popped suddenly into their compartment.

“Merlin's saggy underpants! Why must brothers be such _pests_?” the new boy exclaimed. He'd been so quiet, up until that exact moment, even Hela hadn’t heard him approach. "Do you have any? Mine's called James. I'm avoiding him. He's a twit. And a snitch. Not the Golden kind, either."

Scorpius laughed. "I don't. I'm an only."

"I have four," Hela said.

"You're like my mum, only she has one more than you. Now, that is. She had six." His cheerful face lost a little of its brightness. "You know. Before."

Scorpius stared down at his knees, his own face also darkening. Bastet jumped across the gap between the benches, rubbing her pointed face sympathetically against his shoulder.

"Your cat's brilliant, by the way!" the new boy told Hela. "Like a little leopard, with the spots."

"She's an Egyptian Mau," Hela informed him. "It's one of the oldest domestic breeds."

The boy ran his fingertip lightly along Bastet's spine, which arched, snakelike, beneath her silken fur.

"I wanted a cat," he said. "I got an owl instead. A white one, because that's what my dad had, when he was at Hogwarts. But I wanted a cat. Mum said I could have one, too. She had a Pygmy Puff. Called Arnold." He laughed suddenly. "Arnold."

Hela had to laugh, too, at the face the boy made, which was both ridiculous and inventive. His cheerful goofiness and stream-of-consciousness chatter--not to mention his messy dark hair--reminded her a bit of her dad, and she found herself liking him, in a different-but-equal way to that in which she'd instantly liked Scorpius.

He settled back on the bench next to Scorpius, hooking the heels of his high-top-sneakered feet on the edge of the seat. “By the way, have you seen the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher? He’s like, honestly, about nine feet tall! And there’s a kid three compartments up who can turn into a wolf. Seriously. A really big wolf.”

Hela rolled her eyes. “That’s my brother, Fen. He sometimes wolfs out when he’s nervous. Was he able to change back again?”

“Oh, sure,” the new boy said. “Eventually. I guess. I’m Al, by the way. Al-bus.” He stretched out the second syllable, his voice bearing the tone of universal scorn belonging only to those who thoroughly disapprove of their own given names. “And I might as well get it out of the way right now. My surname’s Potter. Yes, from _that_ Potter family.”

Scorpius looked uncomfortable again. Hela smiled politely.

Al glanced sideways at Scorpius, as if really noticing him for the first time. “You look like a Malfoy.”

“Yes, I…” Scorpius began, the shyness clearly creeping over him again.

“Well, I think…” Al began, stretching his arms to their full, though not-very-considerable length along the back of the seat. “I think we should instantly become best friends. It would drive our parents _insaaane_ , don’t you think?”

Scorpius laughed, looking surprised by the sound, as if he hadn't really meant to laugh at all. “Y'know, I think it actually would.”

Al grinned at Hela across the compartment. “And you too. Are you Muggle-born?”

“Not exactly,” Hela answered crisply, though she really did find herself taking to Al, who seemed lively and uninhibited and honestly did remind her quite a bit of her dad. “I am very smart, though, and unreasonably fond of reading. I could be the Hermione of the group. Don’t expect me to try to talk you out of mischief, though. Mischief is practically my middle name.”

“Is it really?” Al beamed at her. “That’s brilliant! And you, Malfoy? Are you mischief-adverse?”

“It’s Scorpius, actually, and you should probably be thinking, just now, in retrospect, that being called ‘Albus’ isn’t actually so bad. I am slightly shy of mischief, at times, it's true, but the good news is, I’m also easily led astray."

“Brilliant!” Al said again--it seemed to be his favorite word. “We could be like The Three Musketeers—those are characters in a Muggle book,” he added.

“I know!” Scorpius and Hela chorused, and found themselves laughing at each other, with each other, far more than the situation really called for, and Al laughing with them.

“ _Un pour tous, tous pour un_ , then,” Hela said.

"She read it in French! Didn't you? You read it in French!" Al looked sideways out of the corners of his eyes at Scorpius, who was still giggling helplessly, as if he hadn't laughed in years.

Maybe he hadn't. How much would a boy born into the Malfoy family really get to laugh, anyway?

"Yes, I did," she responded. "And I'm Hela, by the way. Since you still haven't asked."

"Definitely our Hermione," Al said, and they all giggled a little more, shaking off between them the tension and strangeness and newness of the past few days, along with their nervousness about all the strangeness and newness that still lay ahead.

"All for one, and one for all," Scorpius put in, when they'd finally subsided, meeting Hela's eyes, then Al's.

“And let us all be sorted into Slytherin,” Hela added.

Al blinked, a certain blankness stealing over his face, the blankness of someone who’s been told one thing all his life, and had always believed it, but then, in one instant, suddenly just... didn't.

“I…” he rasped, for the first time sounding hesitant. “Er, that is... I’m not… not exactly a pureblood, you know.”

“Who is?” Scorpius countered. “And whether you are or not, why should that even matter? It’s all a bit old-fashioned, don’t you think? In fact, it's pure bosh! I wish someone would explain to me how our supposed 'pure' blood has ever once helped my family. I love them, of course, my mum and my _pater_ , and they've stopped believing, more or less, in those silly old ways--especially my mum. I even love my grandmother and grandfather. But, the thing is, they’re more or less idiots. They care about things that don’t make one bit of difference, that made them do things which still--all this time later--make them, deep down, feel foolish and ashamed.” He paused, panting a little, clearly worried that he’d said too much, that they’d now begin to judge him, or look down on him.

“Hear, hear!” Hela reached into the air, into her own little niche in a corner of the safest of Pabbi’s pocket universes, and pulled out three ice-cold bottles of pumpkin juice. She was starting to develop a strange taste for the stuff.

Hela passed a bottle to each of her new friends, and for the last time that year (after all, she had promised), used her very own magic to flip off the bottle-caps, sending them spinning and twinkling up to the ceiling.

"A toast!" Al called out. "Anyone know a good toast?"

Solemnly, Scorpius raised his bottle, clinking it with Hela's, then with Al's. "To Albus, Hela and Scorpius," he said. "The Three Musketeers!"


	12. I Spy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Competitive I Spy. Scotland by rail. There are giants, and then there are GIANTS. Death and Thestrals. _Firs' Years to the boats!_ Everything in Scotland is uphill. A use for the Room of Requirement (not the bathroom--the other one).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I Spy" is one of those games (like Twenty Questions) used to amuse children in potentially boring situations (such as a multi-hour train trip from London to Scotland). The "Spy" picks an object and tells the other player(s), "I spy with my little eye something that begins with (insert appropriate letter of the alphabet)" and that person is then supposed to guess what the spy has spied. Playing such games with a precocious child can be an extremely irritating experience.
> 
> The Humvee, or "High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle" is a ludicrously large four-wheel drive light truck produced by AM General. Originally intended for the military, it's now often used in civilian life by people who have no actual use for such a vehicle.
> 
> The 2001 comedy _Zoolander_ , starring Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell, features Stiller as a dimwitted model caught up in a plot by evil fashion execs who brainwash him to assassinate the Prime Minister of Malaysia.
> 
> The "Nth degree" is most often used to mean "an extremely high degree," even though the N in Nth, mathematically speaking, could actually be either a large or a small number.
> 
> For the uninitiated, a "wedgie" involves suddenly pulling the back of some unsuspecting person's underwear sharply upward, resulting in extreme discomfort in the nether regions. A "swirly" results from forcing a (usually younger and smaller) person's head deep into a toilet, then flushing.
> 
> As Ms. Rowling herself informs us, magical schools are guarded by hexes. The most commonly used spells either repel Muggles or make the school appear to the non-magical view as something else--most often, a ruin.
> 
> Loki's unpleasant memory involves the time he got carried away with his mischief, nearly lost his head, pulled the old "you can take my head but you can't touch my neck" ploy, and had his mouth stitched shut by angry dwarves instead.
> 
> The language Bruce and Loki are speaking is the version of Old English used in the alternate dimension where they were trapped together for several months.
> 
> Both Laufey and Hagrid are about 10 feet (3.048 meters, give or take) tall.
> 
> "Humblebragging"=to make a statement that's modest or self-deprecating on the surface, but is actually intended to draw attention to something of which the humblebragger is proud.
> 
> "Bless your heart," as uttered by a citizen of the U.S. (most especially a Southerner) can have several meanings, none of which actually mean "bless your heart" in the conventional sense. A few common meanings are: "you're a total idiot;" "you just said the stupidest thing in the history of stupid things;" "I hate you with a fiery, burning passion;" "you shouldn't have, no you REALLY shouldn't have;" "do that again and I will personally murder you with my tiny bare hands;" "you display a childlike (and annoying) lack of understanding." Tony's meaning is far less antagonistic, and can probably best be summed up as, "Awww, babe, it's just too adorable when you try to use trendy Midgardian words."
> 
> In the context of the Potterverse, Professor Binns would be one example of _that_ teacher (insanely boring, but knowledgeable), Professor Snape a second (cruel and arbitrary, but skilled), Professor Trelawney a third (long-winded and incompetent) and Delores Umbridge a fourth (fussy, cruel, bigoted, deceitful, abyssmal taste in fashion and decor, hateful in every way, foul-kitten-plate obsessed, ignorant AND bad at teaching).

* * *

If “I Spy with My Little Eye” been an Olympic event, Tony felt fairly sure his youngest son could have brought home the gold--no contest--for Team USA. Of course, it probably didn’t help Tony’s own score (just for example) that his personal answer to “something that begins with P” had been “piggy,” while Edwin’s was “ _Pinus sylvestris,_ ” (which when translated into toddler came out something like "Ine-uff iveffeff").

"I'm supposed to know?" Tony implored his husband.

"Do forgive me for mentioning the fact, beloved," said, his never-to-be-caught-smirking-oh-no-not-him spouse (who of course spoke fluent pre-schooler among his many other languages), "But in no known universe will 'piggy' equal ' _Pinus sylvestris_.'"

In Tony's own defense, there _had_ been pigs clearly visible from the train. Big, thuggish-looking pigs standing around in a series of rapidly-darkening fields, staring in a menacing way with their piggy little eyes as the bright red Hogwarts Express chugged past, merrily blowing smoke over their mud-wallows.

The cows Tony glimpsed were even scarier: giant, shaggy, primordial-looking beasts the color of rust, with spreads of horns the width of a Humvee. Even suited-up, he wouldn't have wanted to tackle one, except in the most dire necessity.

" _Pinus sylvestris_?" Tony mouthed.

“Scots pine,” Loki clarified, studiously not raising his eyes from the pages of his magazine, which appeared to be a fashion periodical for wizards, titled (italics not omitted), _Wizard!_

Loki, let it be mentioned, looked approximately 500 times better in his own tasteful black-and-green robes (he’d changed into them about the same time the Hogwarts Express crossed over into Scotland) than the doofus on the cover, an awkwardly-posed dude wearing a flowy turquoise ensemble and a Zoolanderish facial expression.

Turquoise. Honestly.

Pepper could carry off the color, or Natasha (maybe). Wizard-Zoolander looked like an idiot.

“I py…?” ventured Ed, who clearly possessed the stamina of both a toddler and an Asgardian—either that or (remembering that the fruit of Tony’s loins was also the son of the god of mischief), his firstborn was stretching out the game to the Nth degree simply to fuck with him, possibly also taking advantage of the rapidly-darkening Scottish skies to mess with Tony’s inferior night-vision, the better to make up shit for an even-more-decisive win.

Loki turned a page and snickered softly, essentially proving Tony's theory.

“You two…” he told them, laughing along with the diabolical duo--how could he help it? He'd been literally played by a toddler.

“Evil, that’s what you are," Tony informed them, still laughing. "Completely and undeniably evil.”

He could say stuff like that to Loki now, and not end up getting _The Look_. That bruised, shamed, I-cannot-deny-the-harm-I-have-done expression that had at one time foreshadowed his husband withdrawing to some distant place, the better to sink into guilt and despair.

Time having marched on, however--and in doing so, healed a lot of wounds--Loki merely flashed him a cocky and perfectly Lokiesque grin.

“And yet, you do not hold it against us. We have…” The grin, if anything, got wider. “Suborned you to our wicked wills.”

“Wicked!” Ed piped up cheerily, then giggled.

“I have to admit,” Tony said, “The lot of you--and I don't except your brothers or your sister in this, Mr. Edwin--do keep life interesting. To say the least.”

“I py?" Ed tried again.

Tony rolled his eyes. “Have mercy on a poor Muggle, sweet son of mine. I admit defeat. I surrender.”

“ _Meles meles_ ," Loki put in, "Is what Edwin planned to say, _hjarta hjarta minn_.”

Okay, the first part of that was Greek to Tony (or possibly Latin), but the second part never failed to thrill him from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

“Heart of my heart,“ Loki called him, and even after five years of married life, the endearment still lighted up a happy little warm place at the middle of Tony’s chest, in the exact space once occupied, so much more coldly, by the arc reactor and its hardware.

Tony plunked himself down on the unyielding and probably-genuine-horsehair-covered seat beside his husband, wrapping Loki up in his arms. Let the magazine and the perfect robes crease as they would, Loki didn't seem to care. Instead he scooted down to rest his head on Tony’s shoulder.

“I am very excited and somewhat nervous,” he confessed. “And _Meles meles_ is the taxonomic name for the European badger.”

“You say the sexiest things,” Tony responded, which was true--if not necessarily about badgers, then certainly in general. He guessed the Asgardians hadn’t bestowed the name “Silvertongue” upon Loki for nothing, the oddest words really would roll off that particular organ sounding hotter than hell.

Mrs. Ransome chuckled. She adored Loki, and Tony couldn't help but think she'd warmed up quite a bit to him as well. Like Bruce, she'd also clearly begun to tap in to the Lokiline.

“Dinnt ay ‘my lil eye,’” Ed pouted.

“And yet I knew.” Loki rested a long-fingered hand on their son's shoulder, one of those looks passing between the two of them that had the effect, now and then, of leaving Tony feeling just the tiniest bit lonely. He could hear what Loki said inside his mind, could feel whatever Loki shared with him to feel, but Tony had long suspected that there were some things he couldn’t share, not ever—he just didn’t possess the capacity, or the receptors, or something.

But then, Loki couldn’t exactly take part when Tony and Ed, or even Jöri, played math games together, so maybe it all evened out in the end.

“What?” Bruce snapped out, waking up suddenly. He’d spent half the journey with his head on Mrs. Ransome’s shoulder, snoring softly in her ear as she stitched busily away on one of her quilting projects. Mopsi had kept him company, snoring a snuffly off-key accompaniment from across the compartment.

“ _Duet for Pug and Physicist in D extra-flat_ ,” Loki had named it.

“We have nearly arrived, Bruce,” Loki said. “Do you feel it?”

Bruce seemed to be listening, his whole body still. “It’s like… almost, like a vibration I feel but... don’t feel?" Bruce's face took on a funny look, one Tony couldn't read, but he expected Loki could. He shook his head violently. "But no. No.”

Loki raised a brow, though he didn't say anything, and Tony thought he'd have to ask his husband about that particular expression. Maybe later on, when they were alone. He didn't want to cause his ScienceBro any discomfort.

He, personally, didn't pick up a thing, vibratory or otherwise. All he could make out were dark hills, and mountains, and maybe, in the distance, a big, jagged pile of rocks. Nothing at all that resembled a castle, school, or even a site of historic significance.

But then he wouldn't, would he? There were hexes ( _hexes?_ ) all around, and he was probably too Muggle-y.

Loki's fingers wrapped around his, a whole world of _I love you just as you are_ contained in that little squeeze.

“I remember arriving at Ilvermorny so clearly,” Mrs. Ransome reminisced. “Oh, I was excited! So worried about what sort of witch I’d make, so nervous about being away from home for the first time, about which house I’d find myself in, whether I’d be a Horned Serpent or a Wampus, a Thunderbird or Pukwudgie…”

“A Pukwudgie?” Tony had to laugh. “I have to say, that kinda sounds like something bullies might do to geeky kids—speaking from experience here--y’know, like the extra-evil cousin of the wedgie and the swirly.”

“Pukwudgie is the House of Healers and the Heart,” Mrs. Ransome said, with some dignity.

_Oops_ , Tony thought. _Open mouth, insert foot ._

“The house of friendship and loyalty,” Loki added, winning himself a smile from their ever-loyal family retainer.

“Tony certainly meant no offense," he added. "New concepts, new words…” He lifted a shoulder, as if to say, _Muggles. What can you do?_

“Can’t live with me, can’t staple my mouth shut.” Tony gave Mrs. Ransome what he hoped was a winning grin.

Loki, he noticed, had laid the long, slender fingers of his left hand across his own lips, and Tony knew at once where his mind had gone, to events that had been passed down in the mythology, events related as a joke, that weren’t anything like funny to his husband.

“You okay, babe?” Tony asked.

“Yes. Yes, of course.” The hand lowered again onto Loki’s elegantly-robed lap. He smiled. “Only anxious to stretch my legs and, of course, quite hungry."

This despite a certain god of mischief having eaten pretty much his own body weight in snacks on the trip up from London.

“Look, why don’t Thea and I take Ed up to the castle in the carriage?” Bruce suggested. “There are carriages, right?”

Loki nodded, a little absently.

“We’ll get him settled,” Bruce went on. “You guys could walk up from town together.”

“How thoughtful, Bruce,” Loki said, quiet-voiced (and again, in that quiet, Tony heard echoes of whatever had happened between his husband and his best friend in that far-away world where Ed had been born, that world where they’d only had each another to depend on).

“It’s nothing,” Bruce replied, blushing.

Loki replied in a language Tony didn’t know, or even recognize as one of his husband’s usuals, and whatever he said made Bruce duck his head, tug off his glasses and polish them furiously.

“It’s the truth,” Loki insisted, in that same soft tone. “Only the truth.”

“Okay,” Bruce answered, so quietly Tony could hardly hear. “Okay.”

“Oh, look it’s the castle!” Mrs. Ransome exclaimed, in the middle of this odd moment, and just like that the strangeness wafting through the compartment passed, as if it had never been.

That's the way Tony liked it: no tension, no weird vibes. Someday he'd get the whole story, but he felt no need to rush.

* * *

“I know they’re actually _there_ , because my dad said,” Al murmured, his eyes scrunched up behind his glasses as if that would help him see what couldn't be seen--not by him, at least. “Only I don’t…”

“I don’t see them either,” Scorpius assured him. “Only the whole line of carriages. Though I kind of wish that I could. It's not that I want the _reason_ for being able to see them…” His voice trailed off, and he looked uncomfortable for the first time since parting from his father.

"I wouldn't want that," he concluded in an undertone.

Hela filed that particular discomfort away in her mental files, under the heading of: The First Year doth protest too much (maybe)--only then she reminded herself that her new friend's grandfather was, after all, Lucius Malfoy, his grandmother Narcissa Black Malfoy (she of the bad smell under her nose), and Scorpius's very own dad the one and only Draco Malfoy, at least formerly the prince of "bullies gotta bully."

Her new friend hadn't said much about his mum, beyond that her first name was Astoria (like the town in Oregon), her maiden name had been Greengrass (which sounded vaguely Hobbity), her health wasn't very good, and his grandparents disliked her, which made extended-family dinners awkward at best.

It hit Hela in that moment (not for the first time in her life) how lucky she'd been in her own family.

“How ‘bout you, Hela?” Al asked. “Do you want to see a Thestral? My dad says they're creepy, but amazing. _Wicked_ interesting."

“Hmm?” Hela responded, in lieu of a more concrete answer. Some things she wasn’t quite ready to tell her new friends yet.

Not yet. Especially not the fact that she not only saw the Thestrals, she saw them so well, so absolutely completely and clearly, that to her they weren’t merely skeleton creatures of bones and leathery wings, but sinuous beasts of flesh and muscle and sleek, satiny skin.

Because, of course, she hadn't merely _seen_ death, she _was_ Death--or, at least, _a_ Death.

Hela wondered if the rules for Wizard Chess would be different than those to which she'd grown accustomed, if she could actually play a game to its end.

She let her eyes wander as if they saw nothing out of the ordinary, trying not to watch as her brother Jöri (who, Hela noted, resembled Scorpius so strongly the two of them might have been twins) snuggled his face into a Thestral’s dark waterfall of mane, stroking its supple neck. Anxiety poured out of him, flooding Hela’s brain.

_Oh, buck up, Jör,_ Hela snapped at him, _You’re making me squirmy. I'm nervous enough just for myself._

As an non-answer, Jöri slammed shut the door between them, something he seemed to do more and more in recent days. Hela no longer allowed herself nostalgia for those times when her brothers’ thoughts had been as familiar to her as her own: She knew they'd all begun to grow up, to grow into themselves--even Fen. Maybe a time would come when that closeness returned, when they became closer than close again--only this wasn’t that time.

She loved her brothers still, would always love them, but for now, at least, they must live as individuals.

“No,” Hela told Scorpius, with a sunny grin, “No, I can’t see a thing.”

“Firs’ years!” a huge, rough voice boomed out suddenly, so loud and abruptly close Hela nearly jumped. “Firs’ years, over here! Leave yer trunks, they’ll be seen to. This way to the boats.”

“Hagrid,” Al informed them, with a half-fond, half-exasperated eye-roll. Hela understood. Probably everyone’s parents had “that one friend,” the one you loved, but who at the same time totally embarrassed you in social situations. The difference being, even in Hela’s diverse extended family of relatives and friends, “that one friend” wasn’t half giant.

Hagrid made even Uncle Thor’s chum Volstagg look like a thin little wisp, relatively speaking, Volstagg's giant bushy red beard like a sparse little goatee, and his huge, booming voice like a delicate whisper. Hagrid stood about the same height as her not-exactly-so-dead-as-once-assumed Grandfather Laufey—somewhere in the neighborhood of ten feet--but Hagrid’s shoulders appeared three or four times as broad as Laufey’s muscular shoulders, and his vast beard (not to mention his hair) appeared to have been teased out of steel wool, of the extra-coarse variety.

His eyes seemed kind, though, twinkling out of a deep nest of wrinkles, and what Hela could make out of his face looked happy and excited as a child’s at Christmas, no matter how many times before he must have performed this ritual.

“Hallo, Hagrid,” Al said with a grin, as he, Hela and Scorpius strolled past the half-giant to take their seats in the nearest boat.

“Albus Severus!” Hagrid rumbled, beaming but clearly feeling the pangs of nostalgia, in the manner of all close friends-of-the-family who can’t quite believe the babies they once dandled on their knees have so quickly grown into actual people. His dark eyes twinkled a little less when they lighted on Scorpius.

Hela appeared to confuse him. He blinked at her twice, then quickly glanced elsewhere.

Nonetheless, once all the first years had been safely seated, Hagrid took his own place in the stern of their boat (the bow rose dramatically) and their little flotilla set off across the lake, lanterns coming to life, the reflections of their flames bobbing in small fiery balls over the water’s broken surface.

Just as she hadn’t expected Hagrid to be quite so huge, Hela found herself astounded by the sheer vastness of the castle itself. The lights in the windows struck her as welcoming, yet in the ever-growing dark the towers and walls made her think of the bones of Ymir, the giant from whom the world had been made.

A few blinks and a little deliberate quelling of the more imaginative parts of her mind, however, and Hogwarts resolved itself into a more orderly collection of towers and halls.

_Romanesque, Gothic, Neo-Gothic, Tudor…_ Hela ran through architectural periods and their features in her mind, soothing herself, as she often did, with detail, until the passageway opened up before them, the boats docked, and Hagrid shepherded the whole lot of them--thirty nervous, thrilled, terrified eleven-years-olds, up the rough granite steps and into Hogwarts proper.

* * *

“I have a theory,” Tony puffed. A few spots may (or may not) have been dancing in front of his eyes. “Everything in Scotland is uphill.”

“Statistically improbable,” Loki answered, looking slightly smug. He, of course, through an exasperating combination of _Aesir/Jötunn_ heritage and actually paying attention to his own physical fitness--cardio in particular--wasn’t out of breath in the least.

“Perhaps I should carry you the rest of the way?" he suggested. "Piggyback, would you prefer? Or in the manner of a bride?”

“Smartass,” Tony responded.

Loki actually sniggered.

"Hotass," Tony added, checking out the back portion of those elegant robes, which, though billowy, still managed to convey, from time to time, a clearish sense of the Loki-shape inside them. If anything. Loki looked even better in those robes than he did in his various Asgardian armors, which before that moment, Tony might have found hard to believe.

With that compliment, Loki relented, wrapped Tony up in his arms, into all that wafty, rustley silky robeness, bending down to whisper into Tony's ear, "Shall we pause, beloved, to contemplate the many beauties of the countryside?” like he was a character in a goddamn Jane Austen novel.

That particular form of contemplation probably came easier if you could see--as Loki could--in the dark like a cat.

“Yup, that’s some quality darkness,” Tony commented, once he’d managed to get his breath back.

Not too discouragingly far away now, he’d begun to kinda-sorta make out an outline, sprawling, ragged and rough, like rows of giant teeth that had suffered a series of major dental disasters, until…

Just like that, something clicked (as in _clicked_ clicked, like the turning of a skeleton key in a stiff lock) inside his head. Towers grew up out of the raggedness, and walls, filled with window after lighted window.

“Hogwarts?” Tony asked, blinking a few times, rapidly, trying to reconcile what he’d just been seeing (namely, a set of spectacularly ruinous ruins) with what he saw now—a perfectly intact and even more perfectly ginormous castle.

“Hogwarts, yes,” Loki confirmed, his voice amused but also kind, almost tender. “I could hardly have you wandering about, losing yourself because you were unable to see the _verdammt_ place.”

_Verdammt_ was a Kurt word, and Tony couldn’t help but wonder if the reality of how far away from home they’d both come had begun to hit his husband, as it occasionally hit him. Not to mention that under normal circumstances Loki and his BFF touched base with each other more times a day than a pair of tween-aged girls, and Tony couldn’t help but wonder how they’d manage the separation.

“Oh, I’ll pop in when I feel the need,” Loki assured him, breezily. “Just as I do with Sherlock."

_That,_ Tony thought, _Is news to me._

"I will, of course," his husband went on blithely, "Continue the practice with Sleipnir--or he may come to us, as he wishes. The wand, I’ve discovered..." Here Loki gave the long, black, branchy-looking wand an elegant little swish and flick--barely visible in the dark--and sparkly things like tiny green and gold stars drifted out of the tip. "Only increases the ease of such travel.”

“Of course it does,” Tony answered, unable to completely stop an eye roll. “Naturally. What was I thinking, O magical husband?”

“You were thinking I sounded a trifle smug.” Loki laughed. “Which, point of fact, perhaps I did, though it is merely a knack—teleportation, and the opening of windows and doors from one place to another. Merely a knack, and nothing, truly, of which to boast.” He paused. “Truly, Tony. I do not mean the statement as humblebragging.”

“I know, babe.” Tony had to grin. Humblebragging. Bless Loki's heart.

He slipped his arm around his husband’s waist. Even from that position, he could feel Loki’s heartbeat drumming, faster than fast.

“You’re nervous, huh?”

Loki gave a little mini-gasp before admitting, small-voiced. “A little. And you, _hjarta minn_?”

“Nervous as hell. What do I know about kids? Aside from our kids, that is, who aren’t exactly _kid_ kids, if you know what I mean. What if I suck? What if I’m _that_ teacher?”

“You could never be that teacher,” Loki assured him. “You are too wondrous strange, and for that reason alone they will love you and clamor to attend your lessons.”

“Clamor, huh? I like clamor—but, babe, what do I show them? If none of my stuff works here, none of the good stuff anyway, my lessons are bound to be a little less than impressive. One might even say snooze-worthy.”

“One might,” Loki agreed, and this time the vocal smugness he was projecting was not to be denied, “If you were not possessed of an extremely clever husband, who has been at pains to teach the Room of Requirement of your needs.”

“Room…?” Tony began, confused.

Maybe it was five years of Loki saying "room of requirement" when he meant bathroom (Asgardians, even gods of mischief, apparently being weirdly prudish about some things, especially as regarded ordinary bodily functions), but it took him a minute to twig to what Loki was actually telling him.

“Wait… You mean…?” Even in the extreme, inky darkness he could practically see Loki’s pleased-as-Punch grin. “

"You mean, because I need my electrical stuff, my Muggle stuff to work, you taught the R of R…?”

“Not meaning the lavatory,” Loki clarified, unnecessarily.

Tony let that one pass, as a given.

“You seriously made it so things will work inside the room, because I _want_ them to?”

“Just so. The Room will know you, and your needs, and so when you intend to demonstrate the wonders of your devices, you need only relocate your class to within its walls and all you require will be… as you require. Even, should you desire to access your StarkPad, or to communicate with dear Pepper through the Aether, within the Room you need only desire to do so, and all will be as you wish.”

“Wow,” Tony said. “Wow! And for how long have you been casually popping over to Scotland to accomplish this?”

“Since the day of the letters,” Loki admitted, though he suddenly sounded, ever-so-slightly nervous. “I’ve anticipated your needs?”

"The Room itself couldn’t have done better, baby.”

Loki’s breath came out in a small sigh—clearly, he hadn’t entirely let go of his tendency to second guess himself, though he rarely let it show these days to anyone but Tony.

“I am happy.” His fingers curled around Tony’s. “Beloved, I am happy.”

“Me too,” Tony told him. “It’s gonna be a great year, don’t you think? An amazing year.”

“A year to remember,” Loki agreed. “But now the boats have docked, and soon will come the sorting. If we wish to see our children sorted, we must hurry, I believe.”

“Hurry away,” Tony answered, temporarily regretting the words as he was nearly jerked off his feet when his long-legged and still-antsy husband surged suddenly up the path, his fingers still clutched tightly around Tony’s hand.

One of the kids--Jöri, Tony soon determined—started showing him what he saw: a dark archway, rough steps, a torch-lit corridor, the creased and grubby back of an enormous brown coat, worn by an equally enormous man, that Jör (along with a bunch of other anxious-looking kids) was following down the aforementioned hallway, where flames leaped across the stone walls, and shadows flickered.

_All will be well_ , Loki murmured inside both their heads, lovingly, soothingly. _Fear nothing, for all will be well, my best-beloveds._

In front of Jöri a huge door opened; in front of Tony the gates to the castle, guarded by a pair of somewhat battle-worn (but otherwise contented-looking) sculpted hogs, proceeded to do the same.

_It will_ , Jör agreed, trusting as always.

_It will!_ Tony assured them all, as his ordinary clothes rippled into robes, no doubt at his husband’s command. He had to wonder what he looked like--wise and distinguished, or like the dressed up Muggle he was, or…?

“You are the wizard of your own particular sort of magic,” Loki told him. “A magic beyond the comprehension of anyone within these walls, myself included, saving only, perhaps, our dearest Bruce. Walk proudly here, Tony, and know that although you are not one of their kind, you are in no way inferior.”

“Thanks, babe,” Tony answered, touched by those words, and calmed—touched, too, by all Loki had done to smooth his way.

_Yup_ , he thought, _It’s really gonna be quite a year._

_It's gonna be..._ (and he couldn't help but grin a little at the thought). _Magical!_


	13. The Sorting Hat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce has a socially awkward (but enjoyable) encounter with Hogwarts's new Potions Mistress. The famous Sorting Hat puts Fen, Hela, Jöri (and others) in their houses.
> 
> Can you believe it? This is the last of the pre-written and re-edited chapters. Thank you, dear readers, for all the comments and kudos. Now I'd better get busy with the new stuff!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dorothy's last name "Evans" is a pretty good indication of her Welsh origins, since the surnames Evan, Evans, of Bevan (an anglicization of _ap_ Evan, or "son of Evan), along with Davies, Jones, Thomas, and Williams, are wildly common in Wales.
> 
> Prof. McGonnagall's speech to the First Years is based on the one she gave in _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_. The Sorting Hat's song is lifted entirely from _Harry Potter and the Cursed Child_. That song, Al and Scorpius's houses, and the rumor about Scorp's parentage are pretty much the only connections between this story and the play.
> 
> Velcro is, of course, the proprietary name for what we're supposed to call "hook and loop tape," but never do unless we're forced to.
> 
> The name "Jute" is used for both the plant (from the genus _Corchorus_ \--usually either _Corchorus olitorius_ or _Corchorus capsularis_ ) and the rough, spun fiber used to make burlap, hessian or gunny cloth (as in "gunny sacks"), rope and twine.

* * *

“Hullo? Dr. Banner? Mrs. Ransome?" A light (and maybe slightly nervous) rap sounded against the side panel of the carriage. "Hullo? Are you inside?” Are you there?"

Bruce poked his head out the window and saw a young woman in flowing blue robes backing toward the front of the carriage. He assumed she'd meant to give him room to open the door without smacking it into her, but in the process she backed up straight into the backside of the Threstral that had pulled them uphill, and which still waited patiently in its traces.

Her arms flailed wildly, Muppet-like, shadows from the lantern she carried flickering crazily around her.

"Uh--behind you?" Bruce suggested belatedly.

"Oh... _fudge!_ " That particular "fudge" carried distinct overtones of some much stronger word--or maybe, all things considered, "Fudge" was now a swear word in the Wizarding World. Maybe when wizards or witches got really, really mad, these days, they yelled, " _Cornelius Fudge!_ "

"Oh!" the woman exclaimed again, a little more calmly. "I forget, sometimes. I can't..." Her voice trailed off, to Bruce's regret. It had been a nice voice, sweet, and with a trace of a lilt, one he couldn't quite place.

"You can't see them." Bruce tried a smile, hoping to put her a little more at ease, on the principle that they shouldn't both be crawling with nerves.

His companion, Thea Ransome, of course appeared perfectly calm and collected.

"I can't," the woman admitted. "And..." She touched one hand lightly to her chest. "Muggleborn. So, I forget. Now and then. Can you...?" she began, then caught herself, as if it wasn't good manners to ask whether or not another person saw Thestrals.

Bruce envied her inexperience, if not the obvious awkwardness she was feeling at the moment. The not-quite-horselike creatures, it was true, had a certain beauty, especially by the pale blue lantern-light--if nothing else, the Thestrals certainly were interesting, more like mythical beasts from the depths of the sea than animals that belonged on dry land. He just could have done without the life experiences that made them visible to his eyes.

His mother. His father. Far too many children, in far too many undeveloped countries--his atonement, that didn't feel like any sort of atonement at all when it turned out he couldn't save them. He'd seen too many people die, period, way too many, innocent or otherwise, lost in too many fights, in almost every place he'd ever been.

Good, bad or indifferent, Bruce felt every single one, even the ones like his dad (there was no one like his dad, not really, and thank God, or the Universe, for that), who might have been said to deserve what they got.

The thing was, it seemed to Bruce, that death-with-a-small-"d" didn't seem to be particularly discriminating. He, or she, or it took what happened to be there for the taking.

Hela, his young honorary niece, would most likely have argued otherwise. She, it might be said, knew more than a thing or two about Death-with-a-capital-"D," and would no doubt have assured him that her sort of Death, the big-D Death, was, on the contrary, particular in the extreme. Hela would enumerate the strict rules, and the hierarchies, and the traditions of her kind.

Sometimes Bruce--who been instilled, early on, with a belief in a strict cosmography, fearing God and the Devil in almost equal measure, a fear that decades as a scientist, not to mention everything he'd seen, hadn't entirely been able to shake out of his nerves or the back of his brain--struggled to entirely follow Hela's discussions of her calling, her Universe that seemed both too vast and too intimate.

"It's a little above my paygrade," the ever-reliable Phil Coulson might have said, with his equally-reliable " _what can you do?_ " shrug.

"Are you all right?" the woman asked Bruce, concern in her voice, and on her face.

"He's quite all right, dear," Thea replied briskly, pressing baby Ed into Bruce's arms. Thea was the kind of person who could somehow "dear" complete strangers without the least offense given. It appeared to be one of her (many) superpowers.

Bruce found himself glad, suddenly, for the distraction of a warm toddler in his arms, the small heavy head on his shoulder. To have someone to hold on to. It had, he realized, been a long, long day.

"Um. Y-yeah. Fine," he found himself stammering. "Too many thoughts. My niece and nephews--honorary niece and nephews, my best friend's kids--are being sorted tonight. Maybe I'm thinking too hard about everything."

That wasn't really a lie; he really _did_ wonder how the three Stark kids were doing.

Actually, Bruce found himself worrying about Hela in particular--Hela who had always been Tony's favorite (though he loved all his kids, and would never say it). Hela who was so singularly individual, so seemingly, sophisticatedly adult, and who didn't always play well with others. She may have been the most normal-looking of the triplets, her Gothic fashion sense aside, but by every other measurement his honorary niece was...

Indescribable. Hela was pretty much indescribable. And possibly, now and then, slightly scary, godlike in ways Loki and Thor either concealed or had discarded some time in the past. She was like a tiny, concentrated vessel of godishness.

"Oh, then I'll most likely be their teacher." The woman raised her lantern slightly. Its light leaped up, individual flames parting and coming together like participants in some lively and complicated dance, casting a pale glow across her face. She wasn’t as young as Bruce had first thought, when he'd nearly taken her for one of the older students. In fact, her light-colored eyes (bright blue in the blue light of the lantern) bore tiny smile lines at their corners.

Her whole face, in fact, heart-shaped, and with a Cupid’s-bow mouth, seemed made for smiling. It struck Bruce as one of the friendliest, kindest faces he had ever seen, and he found himself liking her immediately, wanting to open up to her in a way he rarely did with anyone--especially in the aftermath of the Betty Ross debacle.

"Honestly, Bruce." Thea nudged his shoulder. "Are we planning to spend the entire night in this carriage?"

"Huh?" Bruce responded, like the genius he clearly was, realizing he'd been staring straight into the Potion Mistress's almond-shaped eyes, glancing now and then at the happy curve of her mouth, as if he'd been raised in a barn. Possibly by wolves. By wolves in a barn. By barnwolves.

"Funny Boo," Edwin giggled sleepily into his shoulder. It made Bruce think of the early days, when he hadn't been the best of best friends to the Stark family, and little Fen (now on the threshold of his teen years and, God, when had that happened?) had referred to him, as a special mark of disapproval, as "Boo Badder."

Thea merely sighed, threw Bruce a look, and produced a wand from her sewing bag, pointing it, with a certain air of brisk impatience, at the carriage door. The door, of course, promptly swung open.

“Show off,” Bruce told her, with a slightly breathless laugh, released, by that same briskness--or so it seemed--from his spell of social ineptitude. Edwin giggled again, even more sleepily, in his arms, and rubbed his nose against Bruce's shoulder.

The Starks' loyal family retainer-slash-honorary grandmother grinned, giving a brief, affectionate squeeze to the shoulder not currently occupied by the tired toddler's head. "Now, for the gods' sake, Bruce, climb down. I want to get that baby to bed."

"Naw baby,“ Ed mumbled, a shorthand version of his usual protest that he wasn't a baby, he was a big boy (not to mention half a god, with the consciousness, somewhere inside him, of the most complex A.I. ever known to humankind).

"Forgive for my lack of social graces,” Bruce apologized to both women. “I'm afraid I'm slightly overwhelmed.  Possibly even discombobulated.” He found himself rubbing Ed’s warm, small back, more for his own comfort than for the comfort of the now-thoroughly-asleep child.

The corners of the Cupid’s-bow mouth turned up delightfully. “Oh, don’t I know! I was just the same, my first day at Hogwarts, gawping at everything. Not that you're gawping," she assured Bruce. "It's only... I couldn’t stop staring. It seemed so utterly fantastic, like everything I'd ever dreamed, all those dreams one never expects to come true. Except that they were true, everything turned out to be real, and now here I am…” Even in the blue light, Bruce could see her blush. “The Potions Mistress at Hogwarts! It's a funny old world, isn’t it?"

"That's for sure," Bruce agreed. He climbed down, trying to look suave and athletic as he did so, instead of his usual default of awkward-with-a-side-of-nervous. The task that might have been easier if the doorway hadn't been child-sized, no doubt the result of the entire ancient-looking carriage having been constructed back in the days when Bruce, at five-foot-ten, would have been considered a giant among men.

By unfortunate contrast, the step down from the carriage to the cobbled drive had to be well over a yard--and where was a liveried footman with a stool when Bruce needed one?

Despite this one giant step for mankind, he managed to get to the ground with both his dignity and floppy-with-sleep Edwin intact. He reached back to give Thea, who was a good half-foot shorter than he was, a gentlemanly steadying hand, only to find that she’d already sprung down lightly on her own. Or possibly levitated.

Somehow, he hadn’t seen it before, but looking at Thea Ransome in her robes and sprightly pointed hat, Bruce detected a definite air of updated fairy godmother about her.

Had Thea been using magic all along, the whole time he'd known her? Right under their very noses, so to speak?

Bruce considered that highly likely. Almost certainly, what they hadn’t expected, they didn't see. Correction. He, Tony, and those of the Avengers crew who weren't Norse gods hadn't seen, despite frequently inviting themselves to the penthouse to partake of Thea Ransome’s excellent cooking. Thor might have noticed--that one was 50/50, with the thunder god's general obliviousness on one side, the fact that he was a god (and undeniably used to magic) on the other.

Loki had certainly known, had probably known even before the witch-slash-chef set foot in the penthouse. He'd just neglected to mention the fact.

"And..." The Potions Mistress said, still sounding slightly shy. "Ah... Here we are. If you don't like it, we can change... Ah, anything. Anything you like."

Jerked suddenly out of his thoughts, Bruce discovered that he—literally blindly--had followed the blue-clad Potions Mistress all along one side of the castle, around a corner and down a slight dip of the plushy lawn.

In front of him stood a squat tower--a two-story tower, by all appearances--with pointed Gothic windows and a conical roof like a short, wide wizard hat, that looked more or less like something the Stark boys might have built out of Lego in their early days, albeit with a circle of brightly colored flowers planted around the foundations, something Fen and Jöri would most likely have forgotten to include. Off to the left side, there was even a sand box and a small swing set, no doubt for Ed's use.

“For the little one,” the Potions Mistress confirmed. “And it was thought you’d all prefer a bit of privacy, for the family. Most of the Professors are unmarried, and sleep by their offices, though of course Hagrid has his... ah, cottage."

She paused, staring just a little too fixedly at the unoffending sandbox. “As I am. Unmarried, that is.”

“Me too,” Bruce found himself blurting out, for reasons beyond his comprehension--or maybe that he wished lay beyond his comprehension.

He couldn't be flirting, could he?

God, _was_ he flirting? Bruce felt the start of a blush heat his cheeks.

“It looks absolutely delightful,” Thea said, in a firm voice, then surprised Bruce by lifting Ed down from his arms.

“We’ll be just fine here," she continued. "And you two should be getting on. I’m sure the feast’s nearly starting.”

“Are you?” Bruce asked stupidly. “Is it?”

Thea paused on the top step, just outside the miniature castle door, and the stern expression on her face told Bruce she was trying hard not to laugh. She balanced Ed over one shoulder, making a wafting motion with the opposite hand. “Go! Go! You don’t want to miss the sorting, do you? You know I’ll expect a full report.”

With a quiet, “ _Alohomora!_ ” the door swung open, and Mrs. Ransome vanished into the tower. Almost immediately, soft golden light began to glow through the windows of the lower floor.

“Well,” Bruce said. His palms had a distracting sensation of feeling sweaty without actually being sweaty--at least he hoped they weren't sweaty, especially as he stuck out his right hand. “I'm definitely discombobulated, since I seem to have totally forgotten my manners. I'm Bruce Banner. Please, call me Bruce."

“Dorothy,” she breathed, the shyness back in force, though, by contrast, she had a nice, firm handshake. "Dorothy Evans." The hand felt tiny in his, the skin peach-soft except for rough patches, here and there, on the pads of her fingers. The top of her head, blue hat aside, came just about to Bruce's chin.

Standing so close, as they were, Dorothy had to tip her head back to look up at him, and something about her kind, pleasant, pretty face soon had Bruce smiling too. It felt weird, as if he hadn’t smiled in just about forever.

_Nothing like Betty_ , he found himself thinking, for no reason whatsoever. _Nothing at all like Betty._

His hand kept holding hers, and her hand held his, all the way up to the castle proper.

* * *

“Students! Students!” A woman’s voice, strong and surprisingly deep, rang out across the antechamber.

Hela found herself instantly jerking to attention, as did, apparently, every single one of the First Years around her, the lot of them looking as if they'd just received a mild, but unexpected, electric shock.

Fen provided the exception.

Fen, predictably, turned into a giant wolf.

“Mister Stark!” the voice admonished.

Fen turned back into a boy. Instead of looking abashed, or defensive (Hela knew for a fact that she, personally, would have looked defensive as hell), he just stood there, gazing up at the stern lady with his big, deep-green eyes, clearly making the best use of his strong family resemblance to Uncle Thor, dimples and all.

“Well. _Humph_ ,” the woman responded.

Hela wasn’t sure she’d ever heard a person actually say “humph.” Not in real life.

“Welcome to Hogwarts," the woman continued, with a certain air of gearing up to deliver a speech she'd given many, many times before. "First, allow me to introduce myself: I am your Headmistress, Professor Minerva McGonagall. A few moments from now, these doors will open, and you will pass through to join your fellow students. However, before you take your seats, you must first be sorted into your individual houses. As you may have heard, these houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. During your time at this school, these houses will be like your families. When you do well, your triumphs will earn your house points. When you do poorly, or break school rules, points will be taken away, until, at the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the house cup. Is this understood?”

The majority of the First Years nodded. The few who didn’t mostly seemed petrified with fear, a reaction Hela could certainly sympathize with, even if it wasn't one she experienced herself. If nothing else, she found herself too interested to freeze completely.

Book descriptions of Professor McGonagall aside, Hela (an avid movie-watcher from a movie-obsessed family) hadn’t been able to picture her new Headmistress as looking like anyone but the redoubtable Dame Maggie Smith, star (or at least featured player) of about a million different British films. She’d pictured a slim, tallish seventy-something with faded and somewhat world-weary eyes and graying auburn hair.

Instead, in the flesh, McGonagall wasn’t merely tallish, she had to be nearly as tall as _Pabbi_ , with narrow, glittering jet-black eyes, a vast quantity of unfaded raven hair screwed into what had to be a screamingly-tight bun, and a decided look of determined old lady toughness. With her pale skin and floor-trailing robes of ink-black silk, she might have easily passed for one of Hela’s Deathly Sisters.

For a moment, as Hela gazed at her, the Headmistress gazed back, and in that instant Hela caught sight of something she’d glimpse, now and then, in complex people with strong inner lives—a sight of the past  intermingled with the present, a younger, almost-more-real face hidden beneath the mask of age: kindness, courage, humor and decency only lightly cloaked beneath the exterior of strictness and propriety.

“Thank you, Professor,” she said softly, and McGonagall didn’t—as many perhaps would have—respond with a curt, “For what?”

Instead, a slight smile plucked at the corners of the Headmistress’s mouth, and as the doors swung open, she said, in a tone that could almost be called cheerful, “Would you care to lead the way, Miss Stark?”

“Headmistress, it would be my pleasure,” Hela answered, feeling a species of joy surge inside her. She would belong here. She would. After all, hadn't she already made friends?

"Onward and upward?" Hela murmured, grinning at Scorpius and Al. Both boys grinned back, still nervous as hell, perhaps a little shaky, but joyous, just as she was, with that sensation--she could feel it, she really could--of returning to a home they'd never known they had, a home that felt instantly loved and familiar.

Even familiarity with the wide open spaces of both Stark Tower and Asgard’s Golden City hadn’t prepared Hela for how huge the Great Hall was, with its millions of shadows cast by the candles floating in the air above their heads, and its ceiling a deep, soft indigo blue, just like the night-dark sky they'd left outside.

The stool the Sorting Hat sat on, by contrast, looked small and awkwardly constructed, like the freshman woodshop project of an unpromising carpenter, the famous Hat balanced atop it resembling a huge, oddly cone-shaped turd.

Hela’s fashion sense recoiled.

She startled for the second time that evening (not at all a common occurrence where she was concerned) when, abruptly, a rip near the Hat’s brim opened, and it began to sing in a dry, dusty, scratchy little voice, more or less completely off-key:

_I've done this job for centuries_  
_On every student's head I've sat_  
_Of thoughts I take inventories_  
_For I'm the famous Sorting Hat._  
_I've sorted high, I've sorted low,_  
_I've done the job through thick and thin_  
_So put me on and you will know_  
_Which house you should be in_

About the time Hela was recovering from this abuse to her musical--not to mention, poetic--sensibilities, McGonagall unfurled the list of First Years to be sorted with a crisp snap of parchment, announcing in a loud, firm voice, “ _Abbott, Laurence!_ ”

A sandy-haired boy with pale freckles jumped up suddenly, as if someone had stuck a pin into his rump. “Here, Miss!” he blurted out.

“The Hat, Mr. Abbott,” McGonagall reminded, managing to sound both stern and amused at the same time.

“Pick it up," she continued. "Sit down upon the stool. Place the hat on your head.”

The boy stumbled forward. He was short and round, with an affable, though none-too-clever face, and Hela would have bet good money on him going straight to Hufflepuff—except that the Hat called out, when it had barely touched his head, “Ravenclaw!”

The other Ravenclaws cheered wildly, slapping each other's backs. One look at them and Hela figured her brother Jöri might as well just go and take his place without bothering to be sorted—they had “geek table” written all over them. Not that she harbored any negative feelings whatsoever against geekiness in general.

In the next seconds, though, seeing how comfortable the boy looked, how warmly he'd been welcomed, Hela found her euphoria fading, to the point where the pit dropped out of her stomach.

What if the Hat saw nothing in her? What if she didn’t belong in _any_ house? What if she didn’t belong anywhere?

Hela stared down at the sensible school shoes that didn’t look anything like _her_ shoes, like any shoes she would ever wear, sturdy black oxfords with laces.

_Do Wizards even have Velcro?_ she wondered. _Do they have elastic, or factories, or man-made fabrics?_ She was so used to her own world, to _Pabbi's_ world, where magic and science, the arcane and the mundane, interwove seamlessly, she hadn't once paused to think...

Gods, what was she doing here?

Hela wanted, suddenly, to weep. Or possibly to flee from the Great Hall and never come back again.

_Courage, dearest_ , Pabbi’s voice murmured in her head, interrupting her panic.

_Yeah, honey, it'll be fine,_ her dad chimed in. _You'll totally rock this!_

Hela glanced back to see them, sitting together at the high table with the other Professors and Uncle Bruce. Dad grinned at her and gave her a wink. _Pabbi’s_ smile was more subtle, but still loving and warm.

_You will find your place, Hela,_ he told her. _Just as I did. You will find it, and know joy._

His tender pride enveloped her, a feeling like being wrapped up in a warm blanket after hours out in the cold. She closed her eyes, luxuriating in that feeling, letting it strengthen her, letting it melt the ice of her fear.

Opening her eyes, Hela discovered that, somehow, while she'd been freaking out, Professor McGonagall had managed to read her way through a third of the alphabet.

The Hat sorted _Giles, Spencer_ \--a tall, good-looking blond boy into Ravenclaw, then _Granger-Weasley, Rose,_ an equally tall girl with a giant, bushy head of brown hair, into Gryffindor, then a boy with the last name Hobart into Hufflepuff. A girl named Indira went into Ravenclaw, then a boy named LaCroix to Gryffindor—and then it was Scorpius’s turn.

Her new friend glanced at Hela, wide-eyed, whiter than ever--so white he reminded her of that old elementary school joke about a blank piece of paper actually being a drawing of a polar bear eating a marshmallow in a snowstorm.

Not that polar bears were pure white, ever...

_Earth to Hela_ , she told herself.

To Scorpius she said, _You’ll do fine. No, you’ll do beautifully, and we’ll all be together._

Scorpius didn’t even seem to realize that she’d placed the words directly into his mind. He walked forward on trembling legs, lowered himself onto the stool, and gripped the Hat, hard, in both hands.

“Place the Sorting Hat on your head, please, Mr. Malfoy,” McGonagall said.

One or two of the remaining First Years laughed. Most didn’t. They understood.

“Slytherin,” the hat murmured, though inside Scorpius’s head, Hela heard it ask, _That **is** what you wanted, yes?_

Scorpius took himself, still shaking, to the Slytherin table and slumped into his seat, his head on his folded arms.

Two minutes later, Albus was also sorted into Slytherin, but, in contrast to their recently-sorted friend, he bounced up from the stool almost laughing, nearly forgot to take off the hat and had to rush back to deliver it to _Pratt, Olivia_ , who laughed with him, good-naturedly, before being sorted almost instantly into Hufflepuff.

_Queen, Rufus_ came next.

_Ransome, George_.

_I’ll have to tell Mrs. Ransome, maybe they're related somehow?_ , Hela thought—then realized she wouldn’t see her honorary grandmother tonight, for the first time, almost, since the year of her birth. No Mrs. Ransome, no Ed, no Sleip...

_Richards, Anna_

_Roberts, Vivienne_

Hela found herself shaking then, just as Scorpius had—not for her own self, but because she knew Fen’s turn must be near, and protecting Fen was so much second nature to her, even if such protection was no longer something her brother particularly wanted or needed. Even though Fen had become his own self, perhaps more comfortable in that selfhood than she and Jöri might ever manage, and she knew he feared nothing, that protection seemed like a link to the past, a thin, shining connection to the times before everything changed.

_“Stark, Fenrir_ ,” McGonagall called.

Fen walked forward, smiling, confident and proud, sat on the stool, and lowered the hat over his silver-black hair.

The Sorting Hat thought, and thought, then thought some more.

Finally, it said, gently, almost lovingly, “Hufflepuff.”

Fen raised the hat, stood, and returned it carefully to the seat of the stool. At the Hufflepuff table, after the hugs, and back-pats, and cheers, he smiled at Hela in a way that made her wonder, really, how long she’d been misjudging her brother. Fen was strong, loyal, loving, and complete in himself. He wasn’t damaged. He wasn’t “less-than.”

He was just Fen, and Hufflepuff welcomed him.

Blinking back the sting in her eyes, hardly noticing McGonagall's voice, or the syllables of her own name, Hela sleepwalked to the stool. She put the hat (it really was the color of poop, and it smelled weird, like worn jute twine, and magic herbs, and being clutched convulsively by literal centuries of small, sweaty, nervous hands) on top of her elaborately-braided hair.

_Oh, my dear_ , the Hat said, sounding sympathetic. _How am I to judge you? Go to join with your new friends, though, goddess, if that's your pleasure._

_Thank you_ , Hela thought, her breath--that she hadn't realized she'd been holding--gusting out.

_Thank you._

_Slytherin, then,_ the hat said, _And together the three of you may change it all!_

_For the good?_ Hela asked.

_Please, for the good,_ she thought.

_Oh, my dear_ , the hat answered, before calling out aloud, “Slytherin!” _That’s for you to decide, isn't it?_

Numbly, not feeling her feet in their unfamiliar shoes, Hela drifted to the table beneath the serpent banner.

Gazing up at the serpent poised to strike on the banner, she thought, all at once, of her _Pabbi_ , chained beneath the mountain, beneath a different serpent, punished for nothing--and how all that pain, all that anger and resentment and feeling absolutely, irredeemably _other_ had driven him toward darkness and madness, had driven him to do wrong. She thought of bouyant Al, full of mischief and fun, and of Scorpius, with his cowardly, bullying grandfather, and his brokenhearted, contrite, formerly bullying father, and all the good she felt shining inside him.

Hela, drained, and deep in thought, hardly heard as Jöri was sorted (just as she predicted) into Ravenclaw.

A few others followed, but she still took not the least notice. Al had reached out, and Scorpius had reached out, and in the midst of it all, taken her hands.


	14. Sleepless in Slytherin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki has made _plans_. Hela can't sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed"=alert and lively, like a squirrel  
> It's not clear whether the phrase was first coined in the U.S. or U.K. but it shows up in numerous sources from the 1880s on, and may be even older. "Bright-eyed" on its own appears to date back to the 1500s.
> 
> "Bloomers"=baggy underpants for women that fasten with a band either just below or just above the knee. (they're also known as or as "knickers" or "directoire knickers"). They reached their height of popularity from the 1910s to the 1930s, but continued to be worn for several decades after, though almost entirely by older women, leading to their reputation for being grandmotherly and rather prim.
> 
> "snorfled" is a combination of "snored" and "snuffled." Mopsi can almost certainly be relied upon to do both.
> 
> "stick a fork in me, I'm done"=I'm finished, I've had it, I'm completely over this  
> The phrase comes from the world of cooking and the practice of sticking in a fork to test for doneness.
> 
> Samuel Pepys (pronounced "Peeps," like the marshmallow candy), 1633 – 1703, was also an administrator of the British Navy and a Member of Parliament, but is best know today for the diary he kept from 1660 until 1669, which combine his personal observances with descriptions of major events, such as the resurgence of the Black Plague and the Great Fire of London. Most of the entries ended with the phrase "And so to bed."
> 
> "No Schemer, no scheming!"=We can tell Tony is the parent of a toddler because he's making a play on a recurring line from the animated children's program _Dora the Explorer_ , in which she continually discovers Swiper the Fox trying to mess up her adventures and calls out to him (along with her child viewers), "No Swiper, no swiping!"
> 
> To "talk Bruce up" means to speak of him in a way that makes him sound more appealing or attractive.
> 
> The mutant supervillain Mastermind ( aka Jason Wyngarde) is an enemy of the X-Men who used his psychic ability to create elaborate telepathic illusions at will, causing his victims to see whatever he wants them to see. He helped found the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, was a member of the Lords Cardinal of the Hellfire Club, and influenced Jean Grey (or so we thought) into becoming The Dark Phoenix.
> 
> "corrupted piece of ordure"="rotten piece of shit" in Lokiese
> 
> Rivendell (aka Imladris Karningul or the Last Homely House East of the Sea) is a refuge of the Elves established and ruled by Elrond Half-elven in _The Hobbit_ and _The Lord of the Rings_.
> 
> The egg riddle= _A box without hinges, lock or key, yet golden treasure lies within_.
> 
> The teeth riddle=  
>  _Thirty white horses on a red hill,_  
>  _First they champ,_  
>  _Then they stamp,_  
>  _Then they stand still._
> 
> This riddle and the previous one are among the riddles Bilbo asks Gollum in the " _Riddles in the Dark_ " chapter of _The Hobbit_.
> 
> The Death riddle Jori considered rather "Midgard-Serpentish" (if we picture the Serpent in its Ouroboros form): _I begin and have no end eventually I will be the ending of all that has begun._
> 
> "Making bread"=cats tend to knead their owners by pressing one front paw, then the other against their laps or stomachs. It's thought to be an instinctual behavior left over from kittenhood, when kittens knead their mother's stomach to stimulate the flow of milk.
> 
> "Lovecraftian" refers to a genre of horror fiction pioneered by H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). The genre emphasizes the cosmic horror of the unknown or unknowable, and that ordinary life is a thin shell over a reality so alien and abstract that merely considering it drives people mad. " _Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn_ " ("In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming") is a good example of the type of sound combinations Jöri means when he speaks of a name being "Lovecraftian."
> 
>  _"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well"_ is a quote from Julian of Norwich (1342–1416), English anchoress, Christian mystic, and theologian.

* * *

Long after the kids had gone to their dungeons, and towers and wherever the hell it was that Hufflepuffs slept while at school, and even the number of teachers up on the dais had thinned severely,Tony finally got the chance to lean over and whisper into Loki's ear, “Could we…?”

Loki still appeared bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and had been charming the starched bloomers (Tony could only assume, and truly didn’t want to know) off Professor McGonagall for the past hour. Tony, on the other hand, felt exhausted. Also, truth be told, slightly teary, in an embarrassing, “Oh, my wee babes!” kind of way.

He wanted to make cocoa for the two of them and fall into bed, Loki’s arms tight around him. He wouldn't even complain if Mopsi curled up on the pillow and snorfled in his ear all night long.

“Of course, beloved. The day has been long.” Loki patted his hand in a sympathetic(ish) kind of way, clearly amused by Tony’s sudden burst of sentimentality, but too loving to show it. “Hela just now asked me if you were suffering ‘an attack of the Dads.’ I ought to have taken better note of your distress.”

“It’s not distress,” Tony protested.

“Clearly, _hjarta minn_.” Loki gave the previously-patted hand a squeeze, then rose from his seat in a rustle of elegant black-and-green robes. “A most sincere pleasure, Minerva, a delightful evening, and our heartfelt appreciation for your most gracious of welcomes.”

“A pleasure for me as well, Loki,” the headmistress replied. “Do let me know if any changes to your home are required, or if there is anything whatsoever you need.” She looked younger, talking to his husband, it hit Tony, pink in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes.

“And a pleasure to finally meet you as well, Mr. Stark,” the sparkle turned slightly wicked, which made Tony wonder, exactly, who’d addressed their Hogwarts letters. Maybe McGonagall’s bloomers weren’t exactly quite as thoroughly-starched as he’d thought.

“Nice to meet you too,” Tony answered, in a slightly hazy way. Stick a fork in him, he really was done.

“And so to bed,” Loki murmured, steering him down from the dais and out of the hall with a loving arm around his shoulders

“You said it.” Tony yawned so hugely his jaw made two sharp, audible cracks. “Hey, where did Bruce get to anyway? I didn’t see him leave.”

“After a discussion of the similarities and differences between potions and chemistry, Bruce accepted an offer to tour the Potions Laboratory.”

“Cool.” Tony yawned again, half with extreme tiredness, half with the sudden chill of the outside air in his lungs. He hadn’t even remembered coming out the door or down the stairs. “Christ, I’m out of it. Which one was the Potions Master?”

“Mistress,” Loki corrected. His hand slid down Tony's arm, taking his hand instead. “The radiant Welshwoman, in the sky-blue robes, who sat at Bruce's left hand.”

“Okay,” Tony said, already half-asleep on his feet—but then Loki’s words finally reached his brain.

“Oh. Hey!”

Loki gave him a smile of perfect innocence. Butter clearly wouldn't melt in his mouth.

“You bibbity-bobbety-booed over here to Hogwarts right after we got the letters, yeah? You checked things out?”

“How bright the moon shines tonight!” Loki answered. “We rarely see her so clearly in New York.”

For Loki the moon was always “her” and “she.” Maybe it was a mythological being thing.

“Ah, ah, ah! No Schemer, no scheming! Did you insist we invite Bruce before or _after_ meeting the staff?”

“Professor Longbottom gave me my initial tour of the school and grounds," Loki answered. "He is indeed a most genial fellow, with a great love of growing things, and is well-liked by his colleagues.”

“I’m sure he’s a prince, babe, but that doesn’t exactly answer my question."

“In the course of the tour, we delivered a fresh selection of botanical ingredients to the Potions Laboratory, which the new Potions Mistress had just begun to organize according to her preferences. I helped her to relocate a variety of little-used items to the upper shelves.”

“Yeah, you’re good for that, babe, what with the go-go-Gadget arms and all, but what exactly did you _do_?”

“Nothing untoward, beloved. Merely made observation.”

“Uh-huh. Such as?”

“Professor Evans is a kind, gentle and intelligent woman of high ideals and strong moral compass. Though shy at first, she possesses a quiet yet delightful sense of humor. She appreciates thoughtful gestures. She has a sweet smile and pretty eyes. She also, like our dear friend, experienced a tragically unfair childhood and feels a similar desire to do good in the world with an eye to ‘fixing things.' Unlike Bruce—and I say this with no disrespect, for I fully understand his anger--she is by nature patient and mild in temperament.

"Unlike Ms. Ross, who in many respects is an admirable person, she has no familial entanglements—particularly no irascible father who will focus on dear Bruce the force of his oppressive disapproval, thereby rendering our friend  tongue-tied and nervous—and also no preconceived notions. She is happy with her present life, happy in her work, and therefore does not require those things which Ms. Ross, rightly or wrongly, believed she must require.”

“Correct me if I'm wrong, Lok, but as I recall, you were always super nice to Betty. I clearly remember you talking Bruce up to her.”

“Ms. Ross…” Loki stopped by Ed’s new swing set, leaning against a support as he gazed up at the night sky. “Ms. Ross’s mind was like a superficially pleasing house with an unpleasantness in the cellar. I knew the attachment would not last. I knew Bruce would feel great pain when it ended. I saw no need to hasten his suffering.”

“But Professor Evans has your stamp of approval.”

“She is neither a document nor a cut of meat, to require a stamp of any sort, yet indeed I do approve of her," Loki informed him. "I find her delightful. We should most certainly ask her to tea on Sunday, along with dear Minerva.”

“And your well-intended yet ulterior motive behind this invitation, my dear mastermind?”

“Mastermind is a highly foul individual,” Loki chided. “He brought ruin to Kurt’s dear friend Jean, or, at least, to an approximation of Jean--she of the Jean Grey School--if not to Jean herself, which Kurt and his team found extremely distressing.”

“I was actually using the word in a way more general sense, babe, less in an evil-mutant-wrecking-lives type way, but point taken.”

“Understood and forgiven, best-beloved.” A smile flickered over Loki’s lips. “I indeed took your use of the term as a literal reference to that wicked man, rather than an instance of you teasing me for my unrestrained acts of matchmaking, however subtly I might have pursued my ends.”

“Totally understood, Lok. But?”

“There is, as you might phrase it, no 'but.' I like Minerva, and always have done from our first acquaintance. She possesses great heart and character beneath her veneer of sternness. Of late, for she has grown older, I believe she feels some touch of ultimate mortality, and would benefit from the nearness and support of family, yet she has none, for her sister, her twin, was slain in the first war against the self-styled Lord Voldemort. She misses the company, also, of her old friend  Albus Dumbledore—who, I must inform you, though I digress by doing so, was an extremely comely man in his younger years--and though she is, in general, content with her life, who amongst us does not in some way long for a bosom friend?

"In losing her most-loved Francis," Loki went on, "Our Thea became a widow. Her daughter is a corrupted piece of ordure. In my imaginings, I foresee Thea and Minerva becoming most companionable with one another, as you are with Bruce, and I with dear Kurt.”

“You really are trying for Matchmaker Supreme of Earth, aren’t you, babe?” Tony laughed, wrapped his arms around his husband’s waist, and went in for a quick snuggle.

“Compare me not to Stephen Strange, if that was indeed your intent," Loki responded. "However, I do believe--and think I am not mistaken in asserting--that I possess superior skill in planning stratagems.” Loki bent to kiss the top of Tony's head, holding him in that sweet way he had, enclosing Tony tightly in his arms, but holding most of his considerable _Aesir/Jötunn_ strength in reserve.

“Consider also, best-beloved, that I am still in every way the god, so to speak, of mischief, although I now choose to use my abilities--or, at least, the greater part of my abilities--for good."

"That you do," Tony agreed. "Just remember, babe, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. I in no way doubt either your intentions or your skill, but if you're going to proceed, stay on top of it, okay? If only for the sake of avoiding all the potential awkwardness."

"I shall do so," Loki vowed, and for someone called "the god of lies" (Tony preferred "god of stories") these days his husband would rather have died in a painful and messy way than break his word. "For never, on my honor, would I cause harm to these good people."

"Fair enough," Tony told him. His short-lived spark of energy had started to fade in a big way, and Loki not only looked exhausted, it was probably time again to feed the beast, aka their lovely and rapidly growing little daughter. "So, my sweet baby, time to go in?"

"Past time," Loki agreed, with a far-more-discrete yawn of his own. "Thea has fallen asleep in her armchair and will awaken most uncomfortable if we fail to urge her on her way to bed. Also, Edwin sleeps soundly, and our chamber is well-proofed against emitting the least sound.”

“Well, if you put it that way…” Tony said. Loki, as he knew well, loved sleepy sex, and _The Leaky Couldron_ , despite its truly impressive bed, had been a lot less impressive when it came to things like privacy and soundproofing

“I do indeed,” Loki answered solemnly. “Unless the hour has grown too late, and you are too tired?”

“Mmn… It's possible I might just manage, hotness."

"I believe I far prefer that name," Loki told him, giving one of his soft, but far-more-than-slightly wicked laughs.

On that note, they pulled apart and, hand-in-hand, strolled up the slight slope toward their new home.

* * *

Hela felt quite comfortable, having dressed for the night in one of her familiar white-linen nightgowns, its ribbons and pin-tucks and lace making her feel like herself again, and not some stranger. Her bed, if unfamiliar, possessed a comfortable mattress, and she highly approved of the canopy overhead and the curtains of heavy black velvet. The so-called dungeon seemed less dungeon-like to her, and more like a snug, silent underground habitat, welcoming and protected.

For all that, long after Scorpius, and Al, and all her fellow Slytherins had drifted into their dreams, Hela found she still couldn’t sleep. She lay awake for an hour or more, staring up at the star-painted black ceiling of her bed with her night-attuned eyes, before deciding to throw in the towel.

Soundless as always, Hela rose, slid into her black-velvet slippers and dressing gown and headed for the Slytherin common room. She’d loved that part of her new stomping grounds from the moment she laid eyes upon it, from the elaborate black-enameled fireplace and mantel with its low-burning fire, to its shelves of books in their glass-fronted cases, to the wide, thick-paned windows that looked straight into the waters of the lake.

To another’s eyes those windows, at the present time, would have seemed to show only darkness, but to Hela they showed strange fish, intricate grasses, the quick dart of the occasional merperson passing by, bound on business even Hela could not have described, and, of course, the lazy peregrinations of the fabled giant squid. At present, the windows also revealed a small, sinuous silver-pale dragon with webbed feet, an elegant tail and pale-green eyes.

 _Hi, Jör_ , Hela told it.

 _Couldn’t sleep?_ her brother asked. His sendings possessed a slightly different flavor in his dragon form, but that flavor was in no way unfamiliar, and Hela welcomed it always, but most particularly at the present moment.

Hela shook her head, knowing Jöri could see her every bit as well as she saw him.

 _How’s Ravenclaw Tower?_ she asked.

 _Towerish_ , Jöri answered, laughing. _Beautiful, actually, I think it looks quite a bit like Rivendell, in terms of interior design--but of course most of the others have no idea what I mean when I make the comparison. Also, the eagle door-knocker doesn't appear to have figured out yet that I can read its mind. I know that’s a bit like cheating, but really, I hear some of its riddles are ridiculously obscure, not at all of the eggs, or teeth, or three ages of man variety. Tonight's wasn't so hard, except to a load of tired kids stuffed to the eyeballs from feasting. Actually, though, it sounded rather Midgard-Serpent, or Twilight of the Gods-ish, but the answer was actually --I think you'll enjoy this--“Death.”_

 _Good one_ , Hela said.

_I thought you’d like that. Our prefects got horribly flustered and couldn’t guess it properly, so I had to slide the answer gently into their heads._

Brother and sister shared silent laughter.

 _Fen’s really happy_ , Jöri added. _He likes it here. He likes the others in his year, and they like him, so, really, we needn't have worried. Only we always do worry, don't we? I mean, it's Fen._

Fleetingly, in response to this, Hela let her mind brush Fenrir’s. He slept happily, warm and comfortable in his new bed, as his hedgehog bumbled cheerfully around the quiet, shadowed room, in a long, low extension from the castle proper, where the First Year boys of Hufflepuff slept.

Bastet ceased her own prowling and leaped up into Hela’s lap as she withdrew her consciousness, making bread briefly with her narrow, elegant paws before settling. Her mistress stroked her absently, Bastet giving out a low hum of approval at her touch.

 _And how is life as a Slytherin, Hel?_ Jöri asked. _Any plans to take over the world yet?_

 _No more than usual_ , Hela answered. _Though that's not really fair, you know._

 _You know I don't really mean it_ , her brother replied.

 _I like Al and Scorpius very much,_ Hela told him. _Though I suspect Al came to our House mostly to trip his father’s trigger, and Scorp partly because that was what his family expected, and partly just to be with Al and me. And the others? Not evil. At least, most of them. The pureblood thing, by the way, has mostly fallen by the wayside. They’re clever, persuasive, a bit arrogant, some of them--which of course are qualities entirely foreign to my own character._

Her brother laughed. _And?_

 _Oddly... Like_ Pabbi _, many of them. They’ve been hurt, and are quite determined never, ever to be hurt again, never demeaned, never discounted or taken for granted._

A sensation of warmth came into her mind, the purest essence of her brother (who was good, fully good, in every part of himself) and his steadfast love.

 _Then you have a job to do_ , he told her, in his kind way.

 _I suppose that I do_ , Hela answered. _Go to bed, Jör. It was sweet of you to check on me—and don’t try to tell me you only came out to meet the giant squid._

_Nah, I met him on the boat coming over. He’s lovely, though he has a long, unpronounceable and strangely Lovecraftian name, and I haven’t quite committed it yet to memory. You go to bed too, Hel. Sweet dreams._

_Sleep tight,_ Hela answered, laughing too. _Don’t let the big squid bite_.

 _I love you,_ Jöri told her, serious again.

_And I, you, Jör—and, really, I’m fine. Just a little wound up with the changes and all, but everything's good. What’s that thing Uncle Kurt always says?_

_Her brother’s answer drifted back to her, even as Hela felt him shoot up through the water, felt his wings stretch wide, and shake dry, and catch air._

_"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,"_ he told her, in much the same soothing, encouraging way their Uncle Kurt would have said the words. _See you at breakfast, dearest!_

 _See you, brother mine._ Hela didn't allow a single dribble of other emotion to leak out, neither how grateful she felt that he'd come to her, nor how she didn't want him to leave.

 _Think not that I am spying upon you_ , said her _Pabbi’s_ voice softly in her head, as Hela sat within the depths of her chair and brooded upon these things. _I only felt a certain distress from you, my sweetling, and hoped that I might in some way heal it. Take your brother's wise words to heart, Hela, and I believe they will come true. Also, please do inform Bastet that she must not, by any means, interfere with the pets of your fellow students. Even if she finds that to do so is most amusing, she must not. She may contemplate the pleasure, if that proves not too great a temptation, but she may not by any means act._

Bastet’s ears twitched. She gazed up at Hela with her huge, greenish-gold eyes, a look clearly intended to convey, _Who? Me? Never!_

 _Don't take offense, my feline queen_ , Hela told her. _He's only bossy because he loves us_.


	15. The Room of Requirement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony teaches his first Muggle Studies class.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means" is a reference to Inigo Montoya's oft-quoted (or meme'd) line from 1987's _The Princess Bride_ (the word in question, in the movie, being "inconceivable").
> 
> The work of art we know as " _The Garden of Earthly Delights_ " is actually the modern title given to a triptych (three paintings meant to be displayed together), in oil on oak panels, painted by the Early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch. The work was created between 1490 and 1510, and since 1939 has hung in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Not quite so "delightful" as its name might imply, the triptych is thought to imply what happens when humanity gets too much enjoyment from so-called "earthly pleasures." The first panel shows the Garden of Eden, the second a whole lot of earthly pleasuring, the third, Hell.
> 
> "Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?" Loki's quoting _The Bible_ (Matthew 8:26) proving that not only, as Shakespeare wrote, that "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose," but so can the Norse god of mischief.
> 
> Rosanne Rosannadanna was a recurring character played by Gilda Radner in the early seasons (1975-1980) of Saturday Night Live.
> 
> The custom of students giving apples to their teachers originated in the 1700s, when poorer families in Denmark and Sweden paid for their children's educations with baskets of apples.
> 
> T.E.D. Talks are videoed lectures by expert speakers, given on topics such as education, business, science, tech or creativity.
> 
> The preferred hobbit eating schedule when, as Prof. Tolkien says, "they can get them," includes: Breakfast - 7am(ish); Second breakfast - 9 am; Elevenses - 11 am; Lunch - 1 pm; Afternoon tea - 3pm; Dinner - 6 pm; Supper - 9 pm. And so to bed!
> 
> Sweet Shop outlets, which mainly dispensed what was once called "penny candy" out of clear acrylic tubes, at one time appeared at the majority of shopping malls in the U.S.
> 
> The sorcerer and potential Slytherin Tony's referring to is John Constantine, of DC/Vertigo _Hellblazer_ and _Justice League Dark_ fame. Originally created by comics visionary Alan Moore, Constantine is a hell-haunted trickster-magician from a long line of trickster magicians.

* * *

"You're sure, babe?" Tony asked. "I mean, of course you're sure. Only... it looks kinda... I dunno... ordinary? I mean, from the outside. I'm sure it's a Garden of Earthly Delights inside."

The Loki expression that corresponded best with, " _You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means,_ " came over his husband's face, complete with one elegantly raised eyebrow, (though Loki spared him the force of a full-on eye-roll). Tony hoped that the look meant he'd merely misfired on the whole "Garden of Earthly Delights" reference, not that Loki questioned strongly (and when Loki in fact questioned something, _strongly_ tended to be the operative word) why Tony dared to cast aspersions on his work.

His honey, given the circumstances, and especially Tony's pre-class jitters, clearly had decided to let the matter slide.

No lie, though, the door to the actual Room of Requirement (Hogwart's magical one, that was, as opposed to the versions commonly used by their household) did look undeniably snoozeworthy, being nothing but a varnished slab of some variety of plain wood--oak, maybe, or walnut--and of a non-stylish style that would seem perfectly at home closing off any local library's storage room, or leading to the custodian's closet at the high school of your choice. _That_ kind of ordinary.

Clearly having picked up on Tony's total lack of impressedness, Loki deployed the eye-roll after all, but the warmth of his subsequent kiss took away most of the sting.

" _'Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?_ '" he quoted, still looking at Tony slightly askance. "Do you find, generally speaking, that my efforts on your behalf prove unsatisfactory?"

After that, Loki spent a few seconds looking particularly tall and perfectly-postured, as he tended to do when Tony's behavior wobbled toward the red zone on the Irksome Scale, then sighed and delivered a second kiss to the top of Tony's head, patting his back afterward in a way that combined love for him with a certain amount of (slightly) condescending amusement.

_Yes, dearest_ , that pat said.

Despite the humor (and irritation) his husband found in the fact of his being (only for the moment, and no doubt foolishly) underwhelmed, Tony couldn't help but bask for a minute in the other part, all that brilliant god-level affection washing over him, making him feel warm, and tingly, and, always, so, so wanted.

"Realistically, never," he answered, giving Loki's hand a squeeze--a code, between them for (this time), _I'm nervous and kind of an idiot_. "Generally speaking--and I'm not just buttering you up so you won't smite me--your efforts are the best efforts. No question."

Loki gave a sunny smile, no longer bothered in the least--which told Tony that the hum-drum door was probably only a subtle form of mischief, and that he could expect to witness something truly spectacular the minute it swung open.

"Correction. _Never_ never. Or never ever. Whichever it is I mean. Am I babbling?"

"Yet when you appear before your pupils, they will find you wise in word and deed," Loki assured him. "For now, with me, best-beloved, babble on."

"You're feeling generous."

"I am," Loki agreed. "Indeed, this morning fills me with joyful anticipation."

Tony had no doubt. Loki _loved_ teaching. He thrived on it. Teaching magic? He didn't even need to ask.

Loki also, he couldn't help but notice, seemed to be feeling even more than usually beneficent, maybe owing to the fact that they'd not only enjoyed a substantial breakfast with Ed, Bruce, and Mrs. Ransome before they left the mini-tower, but Loki had also scored _Second_ Breakfast courtesy of the Hogwart's house elves--a spread that would have satisfied even the most gluttonous hobbit in The Shire, or put the biggest all-you-can-eat buffet in Vegas to shame.

Up there on the dais with the other professors, Tony had contented himself with a second piece of toast and a third cup of coffee, marveling at the fact that a lesser being than Loki would most likely have been rendered semi-comatose, groaning, and probably ready for a lengthy nap by the amount of chow his honey managed to put away. Considering, though, the sheer amount of energy baby-making Loki ran through in a day, and how hard his husband generally had to work to pack in the requisite number of calories, Tony knew to keep his mouth shut and marvel in silence. After all, underfed Loki tended to be grumpy, while well-fed Loki remain cheerful, even perky, and more-than-ready  to face the day.

The other part of his husband's excellent mood, no doubt, was that they'd managed a few reassuring glimpses of the triplets during the meal.

Hela had appeared well on her way to bestiehood with the Potter kid and the Malfoy kid, with that "thick as thieves" look that normally only came over her when interacting with her "Sisters," the other Deaths. The Slytherins, he noticed too--contrary to description--didn't particularly strike Tony as either nasty or thuggish, more like the type of kids who, in the Muggle world, went on to become champion high school debaters, majored in law or business management at Ivy League Universities, and from there turned into high-powered lawyers, entrepreneurs, or the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. As the founder of a Fortune 500 company himself, Tony recognized the type.

The Ravenclaws seemed geeky in the best way, and in their midst, Jöri (who could be a little quiet at times in new situations), could be observed to not only have a mile-wide grin on his face, but to be engaged in a lively conversation with his housemates. He hadn't seen his son look so naturally kid-like in years.

The Hufflepuffs, chatty and smiley, laughed easily, consumed their breakfast with gusto, worked in lots of friendly back-pats and leaned close to one another as they talked. In their midst, Fen looked perfectly content, not out of his element at all.

Here, outside the doorway to Tony's future adventures, he felt Loki catching these thoughts from his mind and literally begin to beam, as in, he emitted a soft, warm-colored nimbus of light that made him look even more godlike than usual.

"Look now, beloved," Loki commanded.

Tony obeyed, and as he watched, the words:

**_Professor Stark_ **

**_Muggle Studies_ **

inscribed themselves on the dull wooden door in a swirly golden font.

"Nice touch, fancy lettering and all," Tony commented. "Your work?"

As an answer, Loki turned Tony fully toward him, and this time his kiss was not only warm, but deep and thorough.

When they finally parted, he snapped his fingers.

A golden apple appeared--well...  _magically_ \--on his palm.

"'Apple for the teacher,'" Loki murmured. "Is that not the saying?"

"You got it. Kinda love you, Lok."

His husband cupped Tony's cheek with his non-apple-occupied hand. "Do well, indeed,  _hjarta hjarta minn_ \--as I know you will. You are clever, and undeniably handsome in your robes, and I look forward to hearing of all your adventures." He went in for a third kiss, even deeper and more thorough than the second (baby-making Loki, especially, being nothing if not affectionate). "Also--to some extent--I love you as well."

"To some extent?"

"To the extent of all I could possibly feel, now and in my future." With a grin, Loki pressed the apple--cool and remarkably heavy--into Tony's hand, opened one of his neat passageways in the air and, with a jaunty wave, stepped through.

"Sir! Sir!" a girl's voice suddenly exclaimed directly behind Tony, with greater-than-really-seemed-called-for insistence.

He jumped. It seemed he and Loki hadn't been alone after all.

"In _Hogwarts: a History_ ," the girl persisted, "It says that no one can Apparate within the castle or grounds!"

Tony turned around to see an absolute throng of short people filling the hallway, at their head a taller-than-average young lady with earnest eyes and bright-red Rosanne Rosannadanna hair.

He grinned and pointed at the sign on the door. "Don't ask me. Let me guess... Miss Weasley?"

"Granger-Weasley," the girl answered, a trifle primly. She reminded him a little of Hela, which pretty much made Tony like her immediately. Her uniform, he noticed had, overnight, acquired its dark-red and gold Gryffindor trim, like the outfits of half the kids present. The other half wore green and silver.

"Miss Granger-Weasley, then." He searched his memory for a second. "Rose?"

She grinned. It was a cute grin. Tony decided he definitely liked her, triangle-hair and all. He had nothing against know-it-all kids, having been a know-it-all kid once himself.

With a certain amount of trepidation, and an emphatic ramping up of his earlier stage fright, he turned the doorknob and pulled, ushering the kids in before him with a gesture. To his complete lack of surprise, a chorus of " _Oohs_ " and " _Aahs_ " drifted back to him from beyond the open door.

Tony immediately saw why. Under Loki's tutelage, the Room--whatever it had been before--had now _Provided_. With a capital "P." And then some.

The big room somewhat resembled his workshop back home. Vaguely. With heavy Steampunkish overtones.

That was to say--truthfully--that it resembled his perpetually cluttered and frequently scruffy-looking tower work-space in the same way the Sweet Shop outlet in the mall of your choice might be said to resemble Willie Wonka's factory. Both contained candy. End of story.

This was...

This was _awesome_ , in both the sense of the word Loki approved of, and the one he didn't. It was _magnificent_.

Loki, sensible(ish) parent that he was, had omitted the truly weird and dangerous stuff--which, knowing Tony's... uh... slight tendency to get caught up in the spirit of the moment, consequences be damned, and possibly even carried far too far away than could really be seen as prudent with children present, was probably for the best.

What he hadn't left out (to totally understate the facts) was all the fun, funky, shiny, tinkery, and curiosity-provoking features Tony's engineery little heart could ever have in a gazillion years desired.

The Room of Requirement had, at his husband's command, or suggestion, or whatever it might be that nudged the Room into doing its thing, made itself over into the Fao Schwartz of mechanical engineering. If there'd been a giant piano keyboard on the floor, Tony would have danced on it, like Tom Hanks in _Big_.

Hey... there was a thought--maybe he and the kids could _build_ a keyboard for the floor...

Tony pulled his errant thoughts back sharply, before they could wander off endlessly into the Inventor Zone, leaving him zombified in front of his class, blank-eyed and possibly drooling.

"Grandad _has_ to see this," Rose Granger-Weasley breathed. "He'll go _mental_."

"Wow, what an eyeful!" Tony exclaimed, grinning--not to put too fine a point on it--like a fool. "Too cool, huh?"

_Nicely done, husband o' mine!_ he sent to Loki, who returned no actual words, but a distinct sense of smugness.

He turned around to look at his class. His first class, looking back at him with shining eyes and fresh young faces. _"Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts, Teach us something please," indeed_ , Tony thought.

_"...teach us things worth knowing,_  
_Bring back what we've forgot,_ " he quoted aloud. 

They hadn't sung the School Song the night before, neither to individual tunes or all together. Maybe the kids wouldn't know where those words came from.

"It's from the Hogwarts song," someone whispered.

Which answered that question.

Tony had _loathed_ his one and only attempt at teaching at the college level, and had solemnly vowed _never_ to subject himself to that particular form of self-torture again. Being who he was, he knew from self-torture. He whined non-stop whenever, in a weak moment, he let someone coerce him into giving any kind of lecture, from a commencement speech, to a T.E.D. talk, to a lecture presented before his peers--which people who didn't know him well would insist on doing, often to their regret.

Looking down into those bright eleven-year-old faces, though, all of them gazing expectantly in his direction, so enchanted by the wonders around them, sparked something in Tony--as in, they got him in the proverbial _right there_.

He flashed back to the first time he'd brought Jör into his own workspace, the way his son's eyes had _glowed_ (literally, as in they'd projected a sparkly green and gold light about a meter in front of his face, but figuratively as well). Tony had known at once that his new son _got_ it, that circuits and couplers and fiddly little bits called to Jöri the same way they called to him.

"Okay, then, everyone grab a seat. One Slytherin and one Gryffindor at each table, if you please."

The kids exchanged a few looks between themselves, that weird old rivalry already pre-installed, probably by their parents, but still, they sat.

Tony perched on the edge of his own own desk, which, like the door, was made of sturdy wood and teacher-classic in style--it wouldn't have looked out of place in an episode of _Leave it to Beave_ r. He set his golden apple in a place of pride on the corner.

His students settled in pairs in equally in sensible, sturdy chairs, at sensible, sturdy worktables. Each table, Tony noted approvingly, had vises bolted to its opposite ends, and two pretty damn complete looking sets of sturdy, sensible tools displayed in shiny black-metal toolboxes.

The only question that remained in Tony's mind was whether Loki (unwilling to give him a sneak peek at his new classroom) had remembered, sometime between breakfasts, to drop off the particular thing he'd asked him to drop off at the Room that morning. If not, the grand opening Tony had planned would be more-or-less screwed.

What was he thinking? Of course Loki had remembered.

But first things first.

"All right, then," Tony said. "I'm Professor Stark. A few ground rules..."

Thirty kids whipped out thirty rolls of parchment, thirty quills from a variety of birds, and thirty little glass pots of ink.

"Impressive!" Tony told them, "But I'm pretty sure you'll remember. My rules aren't exactly difficult. For starters--no bullying. That might have flown in the old days, with your mums and dads, but it so won't fly here. Bullying equals detention, no exceptions, and I really don't want to give detentions. I have other s... uh, stuff to do.

"Second, since what we do in here is going to be new to most of you, there aren't any stupid questions. I mean, of course there _are_ stupid questions, but _I_ get to decide what they are and to answer them anyway. Your job is to refrain from any laughing, jeering or pointing. Third, if I say safety equipment, we all put on safety equipment. I don't want anyone losing an eye and needing to have it grown back again. Got it?"

The entire class nodded, more or less in unison.

"Okay, now that's out of the way..." Tony leaned forward, hands propped on his knees. "How do you do a summoning spell? Anyone?"

Predictably, Rose G-W's hand shot up, though the girl gave a full-on red-head-level blush when he pointed in her direction.

"Please, sir, it's _Accio_. Then you say the thing you want to come to you. Such as _'Accio_ , broomstick!'"

"So... Wanna give it a try, Rose?"

"Professor, I... um... I beg your pardon?"

"Give it a try. I know it's a couple steps up from your usual First Year spells, but I bet you've got it down pat just from watching your mother, right?"

Rose nodded. "I... think so."

"So, go for it. _Accio_ , broomstick."

The girl gave her wand an expert little flick, and called out the spell (that wasn't really a spell, had she but known) nice and loud.

Immediately, a perfectly elegant racing broom, complete with seat, handgrips and footrests, came zooming out from a closet. It did a couple loop-de-loops over his students' heads, stopped on a dime, reversed direction, and lowered itself gently to Rose's table, twig end closest to her, stick end toward her Slytherin partner.

A Gryffindor boy toward the back stuck up a hand, looking nearly as enthusiastic as Rose.

"A question? Name first please, which I'll try really hard to remember. I'm sometimes not the best with names."

"Roger Halfacre, sir." The boy blushed nearly as dark as Rose, which wasn't entirely surprising. Roger had jet-black hair, but it was paired with what Tony had heard described as a "roses-and-cream English complexion,"--fair, but with a lot of pink in it. "Sir, everyone says..."

"Uh-huh?" Tony gave what Loki always referred to as his _"pray continue?_ " face, eyebrows raised.

"Everyone says you're a Muggle," finshed a Slytherin girl with dark-purple hair and almost silvery-gray eyes. She didn't blush at all, though her hair did change color, into kind of a mermaid-blue.

"Metamorphmagus?" Tony asked.

She nodded, suddenly just as young and awkward as her peers.

"Excellent. And your name is?"

"Viola. Viola Constantine."

Tony, of course couldn't help but think of the con-man and sorcerer of comics fame (who without doubt would have been a Slytherin)--but maybe it was actually a common name in the U.K.

"Okay, then, Viola, I am a Muggle, 100% Muggle, from a long line of Muggles."

He listened to the word "broom" rustle through the room.

"You're wondering how the broom works, considering I'm a Muggle--which I totally am, I couldn't even see the castle until my husband--that's the seriously magical Professor Stark, who some of you will meet with for Defense Against the Dark Arts--revealed it too me. I'll tell you something, though: we Muggles have our own magic, which we call science."

A clear screen, just like his beautiful screens back home, dropped down from the ceiling. The word "Science!" calligraphed itself there in large script, complete with exclamation point.

"We study it at school," Tony continued, "The same way you study magic here at Hogwarts. Everyone is supposed to learn at least a little, even if they go on to be other things in life. Some of us love science, learn a bunch more about it, and go on the make it their living. I'm one of those people. I invent things. I invented that broom. It looks like one of yours, right? Only it isn't."

He went on to show them the transparent glove on his left hand, each finger-motion controlling the motions of the broomstick. He showed them the repulsors, the antigrav, the miles of printed circuits and wires hidden inside footrests, twigs and stick. Their mouths opened and their eyes went wide, and they glowed with the fascination of the unknown and unexpected. A brave few even took gentle rides around the perimeter of the Room, Tony controlling their motions--he really didn't want to kill anyone, or cause permanent damage, on the first day of class.

_Not on your first day? Later will be sufficient, then, my headstrong husband?_ Loki asked inside his head.

_Hahaha_ , Tony answered, listening to his class exclaim over his once-more-grounded invention. _You're just jealous. I did good, huh?_

_You did extremely well, as I never doubted you would,_ Loki answered. _I am immensely proud of you._

_Proud of me? How proud am I of you for setting up this completely kickass room? Couldn't have done better myself, babe!_

A feeling came over Tony, then, made up not only of his own pride in himself, for the way he'd actually managed to engage his class and draw them in--but, above and beyond that,  the warmth of Loki's undoubted pride and love shining over him.

Again Tony claimed a long moment to drink in that light, to bask in that feeling, before Loki reached out, his mind softly brushing against Tony's mind in a touch as gentle and affectionate as any touch from his husband's hand.

Tony continued to feel that caress long after Loki shut the door between them.


End file.
